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THE    FATE    OF    EMPIRES 


BY  THE   SAME   AUTHOR 

IN   COLLABORATION   WITH 

GEORGE    HUBBARD,   F.S.A. 

VICE-PRESIDENT   OF   THE   ROYAL   INSTITUTE 
OF   BRITISH   ARCHITECTS 

NEOLITHIC  DEW-PONDS  AND 
CATTLE-WAYS 

With  29  Illustrations 

First  Edition,  1905 

Second  Edition,   1907 

Royal  ^to,  ^s.  6d.  net. 


LONGMANS,   GREEN  AND  CO. 

LONDON,  NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 


THE 

FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

BEING  AN   INQUIRY  INTO  THE 
STABILITY  OF  CIVILISATION 


BY 


ARTHUR  JOHN   HUBBARD 

M.D.    (DUNELM.) 


LONGMANS,    GREEN    AND    CO. 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1913 

All  rights  reserved 


<\ 


c 


^^4 


DEDICATED 

TO 

MY    WIFE 

FOR 

A  THOUSAND  GOOD  REASONS 

A.  J.  H. 


PREFACE 

^The  turning-point  in  past  civilisations  has  been 
marked,  again  and  again,  by  the  appearance  of 
Socialism  coincidently  with  a  failure  of  the  birth- 
rate. During  the  lifetime  of  the  present  genera- 
tion these  two  phenomena  have  assumed  a  more 
and  more  prominent  position  among  the  races  of 
white  men,  and  it  has  been  my  object  to  show  how 
critical  the  position  of  any  civilisation  is  when  it 
reaches  the  point  at  which  they  are  simultaneously 
manifested.  I  have  tried  to  demonstrate  that 
they  are  caused  by  the  same  force  acting  upon 
different  materials,  and  that  the  supersession  of 
that  force  by  another  and  more  powerful  is 
indispensable  to  the  stability  of  civilisation.  My 
theme  is  not  one  that  has  permitted  me  to 
write  with  a  running  pen. 

My  most  sincere  thanks  are  due  to  Mrs.  Renney 
AUinson  for  an  immensity  of  kind  and  efficient 
help.  She  has  not  only  prepared  my  manuscript 
for  the  press  and  compiled  the  index,  but  has 
rendered  me  valuable  assistance  by  criticism  and 
reference  to  authors. 

I  heartily  thank,  too,  Mr.  Clement  John 
Wilkinson,  M.R.C.S.Eng.,  alike  for  the  welcome 


viii  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

encouragement  that  he  has  given  me  during 
the  progress  of  my  task,  and  for  the  valuable 
time  and  work  that  he  devoted  to  it. 

The  reader  will  see  that  this  essay  could  not 
have  been  written  had  it  not  been  preceded  by  Mr. 
Benjamin  Kidd's  great  work,  Social  Evolution. 

A.  J.  H. 


Little  Dean,  Newnham-on-Severn, 
Gloucestershire, 
October  1912. 


SYNOPSIS    OF    CONTENTS 
PART  I 

THE  BASIS  OF  A   PERMANENT  CIVILISATION 

CHAPTER   I 
THE  ANTECEDENTS  OF  CIVILISATION 

PAGE 

Is  a  permanent  civilisation  a  possibility  ? 4 

Necessary  to  discover  the  forces  that  make  for  growth,  and  those 

that  make  for  decay  of  civilisation  ' 4 

These  forces  are  constants 5 

History  only  gives  the  resultant  of  these  forces  ;  therefore  the 

forces  themselves  are  not  discoverable  in  history.     Analogy 

of  the  parallelogram  of  forces  in  mechanics  .  .  .  .  o 
These  forces  can  be  identified  when  the  whole  history  of  organic 

advance  is  reviewed 6 

Organic  advance  is  intermittent  :  a  new  ''method"  is  adopted 

at  each  stage 8 

List  of  these  "methods" 9 

Definition  of  word  ''  Instinct "  when  used  in  succeeding  pages  .  10 
Definition  of  word  "Reason"  when  used  in  succeeding  pages    .       10 

CHAPTER   II 
THE  METHOD  OF  INSTINCT 

The  standing  problem  in  any  method  is  that  of  reconciling  the 

Individual  (who  dies)  with  the  Race  (which  persists)     .         .       13 

The  method  of  Instinct  solves  the  problem  by  means  of  inborn 

impulse 13 

Inborn  impulse  is  an  appurtenance  of  the  Race,  and  merely  sacri- 
fices the  Individual 14 

Tlierefore  it  involves  unlimited  waste  of  individual  lives       .         .       17 

This  wastefulness  is  necessarily  inherent  in  the  method        .         .       18 


THE  FATE  OF  EMPIRES 


Therefore  the  method  itself  is  imperfect 18 

Fauna  of  previous  geologic  epochs  probably  purely  instinctive    .      21 
Modern  animals  not  descended  from  types  most  prominent  in 

past  geological  epochs 21 

Modern  animals  possess  a  modicum  of  Reason      ....       22 
Which  lessened  the  wastefulness  of  pure  Instinct  and  enabled 

their  progenitors  to  displace  a   purely  instinctive   fauna.       24 

Thus  Instinct  is  superseded  by  Reason 24 

But  Reason,  in  its  turn,  will  be  under  the  necessity  of  solving  the 
same  standing  problem,  viz.  the  problem  of  reconciling  the 
transitory  Individual  with  the  long  life  of  the  Race      .         .       25 

CHAPTER   III 
THE  METHOD  OF  REASON 

In  man  Reason  has  become  the  overlord  of  Instinct,  and  effects 
an  immense  saving  of  waste.  Man  owes  his  position  at  the 
head  of  the  organic  world  to  the  energy  thus  set  free,  but 
his  dependence  on  the  method  of  Reason  is  absolute      .  27  and  28 

Reason  is  an  appurtenance  of  the  Individual,  not  of  the  Race      .       29 

Under  Reason,  interest  takes  the  place  that  was  occupied  by  im- 
pulse under  Instinct.  An  attenuation  of  the  stress  of  life 
results 29 

The  general  stress  of  life  is  resolvable  into  two  : 

A.  The    rivalry  among    contemporaries :    the    stress    of 

competition 31 

B.  The  effort  involved  in  the  nurture  and  care  of  children : 

the  stress  of  reproduction 31 

Necessary  to  examine  the  manner  in  which  Reason  deals  with 

each  of  these  stresses  separately 32 

Definition   of  the  words  "  Society "  and    "  Race "    as  used  in 

succeeding  pages 33 

Conception  indicated  by  word  ''^  Society  "  is  purely  the  creation 

of  Reason 33 

Examination  of  interaction  of  interest  of  individual  with  that  of 
Society  resolves  itself  into  an  examination  of  the  stress  of 
competition 34 

While  examination  of  interaction  of  the  interest  of  the  Individual 
with  that  of  the  Race  resolves  itself  into  an  examination  of  the 
stress  of  reproduction 34 

Reason  being  an  appurtenance  of  the  Individual,  we  have  to  ask 
whither  his  interest  leads  him  in  dealing  with  each  of  these 
stresses 34 


SYNOPSIS   OF   CONTENTS  xi 


CHAPTER   IV 

REASON  IN  RELATION  TO  COMPETITION:  THE  IN- 
TEREST OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  RELATION  TO 
SOCIETY 

PAGE 

No  disparity  in  point  of  duration  in  time  between  Individual  and 
Society  :  therefore  not  antecedently  impossible  that  their 
interests  may  be  reconciled    .......       86 

"  Is  it  to  the  interest  of  the  Individual  to  abolish  competition  ?  "       38 

The  proposal  to  abolish  competition  excites  a  sense  of  revulsion, 
and  the  arguments  against  it  are  inspired  by  that  sentiment 
rather  than  purely  rational 38 

Thus  it  has  been  urged  that  slavery  to  a  bureaucracy  would  result. 
But  that  slavery  would  be  less  than  the  slavery  to  competi- 
tive conditions  of  life 40 

Again,  it  has  been  urged  that  degeneration  of  "  character  "  would 

ensue.     But  all  that  is  required  is  a  rational  character .         .       41 

The  revulsion  of  feeling,  and  tlie  arguments  founded  upon  it,  are 

not  rational 42 

Relief  from  the  incubus  of  competition  is  to  the  interest  of 

Society 42 

"  Is  it  in  the  power  of  the  Individual  to  abolish  competition  .^  "   .       42 

It  has  been  urged  that  the  instinctive  impulse  leading  to  indivi- 
dual ownership  renders  its  abolition  impossible      ...       43 

But  that  argument  ignores  the  ever-increasing  ascendancy  of 

Reason  over  Instinct 45 

Office  of  Reason  is  to  prevent  the  wastefulness  of  the  competitive 
method  of  Instinct :  Socialism  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
the  working  of  pure  Reason.  Pure  Reason  can  reconcile  the 
interest  of  the  Individual  with  that  of  Society       ...       46 


CHAPTER   V 

REASON  IN  RELATION  TO  REPRODUCTION:  THE 
INTEREST  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  RELATION 
TO  THE  RACE 

Reason  takes  no  account  of  the  interest  of  the  Race  :  only  of  the 

interest  of  the  Individual 48 

"Is  it  to  the  interest  of  the  Individual  to  decline  the  provision  of 

future  generations }" 49 


xii  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

PAQE 

It  may  be  said  that  the  question  is  unfair  because  Instinct  inter- 
venes^ and  Reason  does  not  stand  alone         ....       49 
But,  again,  that  argument  ignores  the  ever-increasing  ascend- 
ancy of  Reason  over  Instinct 49 

Life  an  entailed  estate.  That  the  owner  should  be  constrained 
to  leave  it  undiminished  is  of  the  essence  of  the  entail. 
Reason  supplies  no  constraint,  and  it  is  to  the  interest  of 

the  life-tenant  to  break  the  entail 51 

''  Is  it  in  his  power  to  break  the  entail  ?  " 62 

Ask  the  Registrar-General 53 

Pure  Reason  cannot  reconcile  the  interests  of  the  Individual  with 

that  of  the  Race 54 

CHAPTER   VI 

RELATIVE  INTERESTS  OF  SOCIETY  AND  THE  RACE 

The  triangle  of  interests 55 

As  reproductive  activity  is  lessened,  the  stress  of  competition 

becomes  less  severe.  Converse  also  true  ....  56 
But  Reason  does  not  ask  that  the  stresses  should  be  lessened,  but 

abolished 57 

Tlie  interest  of  Society  is  as  hostile  to  the  Race  as  is  that  of  the 

Individual 59 

CHAPTER   VII 
CONDEMNATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  REASON 

The  revolt  against  the  social  stress  occurs  synchronously  with  the 
revolt  against  the  racial  stress,  and  marks  a  definite  point  of 
growth  of  Reason  relatively  to  Instinct  ....       61 

The  power  of  controlling  the  birthrate  is  a  new  evolutionary  en- 
vironment, purely  the  creation  of  Reason      ....       62 

This  environment  is  deadly  to  the  Race  :  example  of  France        .       64 

Permanence  of  a  civilisation  that  is  founded  on  pure  Reason  is  a 

flat  impossibility 64 

CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS  MOTIVE 

Therefore  a  supra-rational  method  requires  investigation     .         .       67 
To  take  precedence  of  Reason  such  a  method  must  be  free  from 
the  cause  of  disability  that  is  common  to  its  predecessors, 


SYNOPSIS   OF  CONTENTS  xiii 


and  more  particularly  from  the  form  of  disability  that  is 
special  to  Reason 68 

^Vhat  is  the  cause  of  the  disability  that  is  common  to  its  pre- 
decessors ? 68 

Not  one  has  failed  to  make  good  the  deficiency  in  its  predecessor  ; 
but  each  extension  of  environment  being  still  geocentric^ 
has  raised  fresh  difficulties .70 

Therefore  the  method  of  Religious  Motive  can  only  be  suc- 
cessful if  it  provides  an  environment  that  does  not  admit 
of  extension 70 

Taking  cognisance  of  the  infinite  it  fulfils  this  requirement  .       71 

The  form  of  disability  that  is  special  to  Reason  is  failure  to  pro- 
vide a  basis  for  disinterested  conduct 71 

But,  when  in  relation  with  the  infinite,  the  significance  of  life  is 

in  service,  and  duty  takes  the  place  of  interest      .         .         .       72 

Definition  of  the  word  ''  Religion  "  as  used  in  succeeding  pages        72 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  RELATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS 
MOTIVE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  STRESS:  THE  DUTY  OF 
THE  INDIVIDUAL  WITH  REGARD  TO  SOCIETY 

The  lifelong  self-sacrifice  of  a  rational  being  cannot  be  justified 
on  geocentric  grounds.  But  the  supra-rational  method  is 
another  fresh  departure,  dependent  on  the  reality  of  the 
cosmocentric  significance  of  conduct 7-4 

That  significance  in  its  turn  dependent  on  freedom  of  the  will. 
If  that  freedom  is  in  our  possession,  then  conduct  is  invested 
with  the  dignity  of  cosmocentric  significance         ...       76 

"  Is    it   the   duty  of  the   Individual  to  accept  a  competitive 

life?" 77 

No  :  as  in  the  method  of  Instinct,  unlimited  competition  is  soci- 
ally immoral 77 

'^  Is  it  his  duty  to  accept  a  non-competitive  life  ? "       .         .         .78 

No  :  for  the  non-competitive  life  of  the  method  of  Reason  is 

socially  a-moral 80 

Thus  a  deadlock  occurs,  and  the  question  arises  :  "  Is  it  in  any 
way  in  the  power  of  the  Individual  so  to  frame  his  life  that 
his  social  conduct  shall  be  of  cosmocentric  significance  ?  "     .       81 

Two  elements  are  necessary  to  significance  of  conduct :  liberty 

and  law 81 


xiv  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

PAGE 

Competitive  method  furnishes  liberty  and  a  non-competitive 
method  furnishes  law.  If  each  were  taken  as  the  complement 
of  the  other  the  deadlock  would  be  removed ....       82 

But  each  method  excludes  the  other 83 

Therefore  the  question  arises:  "Does  the  Individual  possess  a 
solvent  of  each  that  enables  them  to  enter  into  com- 
bination?"    ...  83 

Yes  :  Religious  Motive  has  claims  to  allegiance  that  are  superior 

to  either 84 

In  the  absence  of  this  solvent  the  purely  rational  being  is  bound 

to  his  method,  but  in  its  presence  he  is  not  ....       84 

He  has  power  of  selection  from  each  of  the  lower  methods  :  he 

can  retain  the  liberty  of  the  one  and  the  law  of  the  other     .       85 

The  cosmocentric  method  thus  provides  a  machinery  that  is  perfect 

for  significant  social  conduct         .         .         .        ,        ,        .       86 


CHAPTER   X 

RELATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS  MOTIVE 
TO  THE  RACIAL  STRESS:  THE  DUTY  OF  THE 
INDIVIDUAL  WITH  REGARD  TO  THE  RACE 

"  Is  it  the  duty  of  the  Individual  to  carry  the  multiplication  of  the 
Race  to  its  utmost  limits,  as  in  the  method  of  Instinct,  or  to 
act  in  a  contrary  manner,  as  in  the  method  of  Reason  ?  "      .       87 

The  method  of  Instinct  is  racially  a-moral 88 

The  method  of  Reason  is  racially  immoral 89 

Thus  a  deadlock  occurs  analogous  to  that  reached  in  the  last 
chapter,  and  the  question  arises :  '^  Is  it  in  the  power  of 
the  Individual  to  avoid,  at  the  same  time,  the  racial  a-morality 
of  the  one  and  the  racial  immorality  of  the  other  ?  "      .         .       89 

Diagram  of  geocentric  systems  as  they  appear  from  the  point  of 

view  of  Religious  Motive 90 

With  the  method  of  Reason  comes  racial  liberty,  and  with  the 
method  of  Instinct  racial  law.  Significance  in  racial  conduct 
only  attained  by  their  amalgamation.  This  cannot  occur 
spontaneously 91 

But  can  occur  in  the  presence  of  the  external  authority  of  Re- 
ligious Motive,  which  thus  provides  a  machinery  that  is 
perfect  for  significant  racial  conduct 92 


SYNOPSIS   OF   CONTENTS  xv 


CHAPTER  XI 

MUTUAL  RELATIONS    OF   SOCIETY   AND   THE    RACE 
UNDER  THE   METHOD   OF  RELIGIOUS  MOTIVE 

PAGE 

^The  future  of  tlie  Race  is  far  removed  from  the  outlook  of  the 

Individual  on  account  of  their  disparity  in  length  of  life       .       95 
Thus  it  becomes  the  office  of  Society,  acting  under  the  method 
of  Religious  Motive,  to  provide  the  means  whereby  racial 
duty,  already  recognised,  can  be  carried  out — to  provide, 
that  is,  a  nexus  that  shall  join  together  the  Individual  and 

the  Race 96 

This  link  provided  in  the  social  institution  of  the  family  .  .  96 
Hence  the  semi-religious  veneration  for  the  family  ...  97 
The  family  as  an  institution  cannot  be  justified  in  pure  Reason  .  98 
Legislative  attacks  on  the  family  react  on  the  Race  ...  98 
The  honour  in  which  the  family  is  held  as  an  institution  gives 

the  measure  of  the  vitality  of  a  given  civilisation  ...       99 


CHAPTER   XII 

JUSTIFICATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS 
MOTIVE 

This  method  not  yet  the  dominating  influence  in  the  civilisation 

of  the  white  man 100 

Its  failure  not  to  be  attributed  to  the  method,  but  to  the  fact 

that  the  method  has  not  been  adopted  .....     101 

T'nder  the  method  of  Religious  Motive,  social  conduct  is  that  of 
a  trustee  and  racial  conduct  that  of  the  life-tenant  of  an 
entailed  estate .101 

Quotation  from  Gospel  according  to  the  Egyptians       .         .         .     102 

The  co-ordination  of  law  and  liberty  is  the  very  note  of  the 
method  of  Religious  Motive,  but  many  have  sought  and 
none  found  it  within  the  confines  of  Reason  .         .         .        .     102 

Reason  seeks  but  cannot  attain  a  permanent  civilisation.  Its 
attainment  is  only  possible  as  an  entirely  unessential  pro- 
perty of  the  method  of  Religious  Motive       ....     103. 


xvi  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 


PART   II 

HISTORICAL  ILLUSTRATION  OF  THE  PRIN- 
CIPLES INDICATED  IN  THE  PRECEDING 
CHAPTERS 

CHAPTER   I 
ROME  AND  CHINA 

PAGE 

As  already  pointed  out  in  Part  !_,  Chap.  I,  the  forces  that  make 
for  the  growth  or  the  decay  of  a  civilisation  cannot  be 
divined  from  history.  But  when  these  forces  liave  been 
identified  already,  it  is  quite  possible  to  trace  their  working 
in  history,  and,  moreover,  it  is  necessary  to  do  so  in  order  to 
test  the  truth  of  the  general  principles  laid  down  in  Part  I  .     107 

For  this  purpose  we  shall  choose  two  great  civilisations  that  were 
in  existence  about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  Era  :  the 
Roman  and  tlie  Chinese.  The  one  disappeared,  but  the 
other  remains,  and  is  still  the  most  tremendous  factor  in 
the  Avorld  of  to-dav .     109 


CHAPTER   II 

RELIGION  UNDER  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE 

Do  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  religious  systems  that 
formed  part  of  the  polity  of  the  State,  or  of  systems  that 

were  cosmocentric.'' 114 

Evidence  that  they  were  geocentric 115 

With  two  exceptions,  viz.  Judaism  and  Christianity.     These  two 

were  intolerable  to  the  geocentric  Roman  Empire  .         .     117 

Treatment  accorded  to  Judaism  and  Christianity .         .         .         .     118 
The  Roman  Empire  shows  the  triumph  of  Reason.     Therefore 
r        we  must  expect  to  see  the  exaltation  of  Society  and  the  decay 

of  the  Race 122 


SYNOPSIS   OF   CONTENTS        xvii 

CHAPTER   III 
SOCIETY   UNDER  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE 

PAGE 

The   emperors.      To    the   modern    mind    many  of  them  seem 

pathological 124 

But  they  were  not  unpopular 125 

They  were  merely  typical  of  their  age 125 

The  Municipalities.     They  were  highly  organised,  and  largely 

supplanted  the  family 126 

Literature.  Rudimentary  character  of  the  ideals  of  goodness  set 
up  by  the  moralists.  Descriptions  of  Roman  Society  given 
by  the  satirists  are  not  preposterous 127 

Trade  Unions  and  Socialism.  Efforts  to  avoid  stress  of  com- 
petition           .....     128 

These    efforts    culminate    in    the    vast    socialistic    decree    of 

Diocletian 132 

The  splendour  of  Society  under  the  Roman  Empire     .         .         .     133 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE  FAMILY  AND  THE  RACE  UNDER  THE 
ROMAN  EMPIRE 

Forms  of  the  monogamous  family :  Cognation  and  agnation. 
The  family  in  early  Roman  history  and  throughout  Chinese 

history  is  agnatic 134 

Cognation  shows   us  the  family  in   its  contact  with   Society ; 

agnation  shows  it  in  contact  with  the  Race    ....     136 
Marriage  in  Rome  :   confarreation,  coemption,  usus.     Divorce : 

general  aversion  from  matrimony  in  any  form       .         .         .137 
Infanticide:  abortion.     Advantages  of  childlessness.     ^'A  man 

who  married  was  regarded  as  hardly  in  his  senses  "       .         .     140 
Augustus  sets  himself  to  save  the  Race  :  methods  adopted  by  him  : 
the  Lex  Julia  :  its  three  parts  :  it  attempts  to  make  marriage 
and  the  possession  of  a  family  fashionable      .         .         .         .141 
The  Lex  Pappia  Poppaea,  an  extension  of  the  Lex  Julia        .         .     142 

Is  not  allowed  to  become  a  dead  letter ]  43 

These  laws  do  not  have  even  a  temporary  success         .        .        .     143 

Augustus  and  the  Equites 144 

The  numbers  of  the  State  are  therefore  kept  up  by  manumission 
of  persons  of  servile  birth.  But  the  success  of  this  measure 
is  only  temporary  ....  ....     145 


xviii        THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 


PAQB 


Constantiae  removes  the  seat  of  imperial  power  from  Rome  to 
Constantinople,  and  a  contemporary  writer,  Lactantius^ 
refers  to  the  ominous  depopulation  of  Italy  ....     147 


CHAPTER   V 

GREECE 

Eminence  of  Reason  in  ancient  Greece 148 

Brevity  of  the  duration  of  this  eminence 148 

Rapidity  of  the  extermination  of  this  Greek  Race  is  in  direct  ratio 

to  its  pre-eminence  in  Reason 149 

Suggestion  that  eugenic  measures  led  to  this  sudden  appearance 
of  pre-eminence  in  Reason.     Quotation  from  Dr.  Bateson's 

work  on  Mendelism 150 

The  basis  of  a  stable  civilisation  is  not  to  be  found  in  eugenics    .     151 


CHAPTER   VI 
RELIGION  IN  CHINA 

Chinese  religious  conditions  are  the  opposite  of  those  obtaining 

in  Western  civilisations 152 

Tao-ism.     The  meaning  that  it  has  for  the  Chinese  people.    The 

writer's  experience  in  a  temple  in  China        ....     153 

Tao-ism  is  not  geocentric.     It  does  not  inculcate  obedience  to 

the  State.     It  ignores  the  interest  of  Society  .         .         .     15G 

Therefore,  in  the  ordering  of  social  conduct,  the  Chinese  have 
had  to  fall  back  upon  the  teachings  of  Confucius,  an  ethical 
philosopher 166 

We  may  look  for  results  exactly  opposite  to  those  seen  in  the 

Roman  Empire 157 

CHAPTER   VII 
SOCIETY  IN  CHINA 

Chinese  associations  of  labourers  are   not  formed   to   restrict 

competition 158 

The  severity   of   the  social  stress  is  unmitigated,   and  social 

conditions  are  squalid 160 

Nevertheless  there  is  high  development  of  Reason        .         .         .     166 


SYNOPSIS   OF  CONTENTS  xix 

CHAPTER   VIII 
THE  FAMILY  AND  THE   RACE   IN   CHINA 

PAGE 

The  agnatic  family  is  the  supreme  institution,  and  all   other 

institutions  are  contributory  to  it 169 

Thus  the  Race  is  maintained,  but,  owing  to  neglect  of  social  duty, 

only  in  spite  of  immense  difficulties 169 

Tliese  difficulties  are  : 

1.  Impotence  and  maladministration  of  the  State.     This 

leads  to  recurrent  civil  wars  and  disturbances,  accom- 
panied by  enormous  loss  of  life 170 

Also  to  loss  of  life  from  famine 171 

2.  Neglect  of  science.     This  leads  to  an  appalling  rate  of 

infant  mortality 172 

Exposure  of  female  infants  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the 

infanticide  that  prevailed  in  the  Roman  Empire  .  .  .173 
^Neglect  of  science  also  leads  to  loss  of  life  from  preventable 

disease 174 

Malaria  not  less  present  in  China  than  in  ancient  Greece  and 

Rome 174 

Nevertheless  all  these  drawbacks  count  for  little  when  opposed 

to  the  power  of  an  unrestricted  birthrate  ....  174 
That  power  has  continuously  preserved  the  Chinese  Race  and 

civilisation  from  the  most  remote  antiquity,  and  their  future 

is  incalculable 175 

Note  on  the  Jewish  Race,  and  on  ancient  Egypt  .        .        .        .     175 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  INDISPENSABLE  BASIS  OF  A  STABLE 
CIVILISATION 

China  furnishes  an  incomplete  example  of  the  method  of  Religious 
Motive,  because  it  shows  only  the  transformation  of  the 
service  of  the  Race  into  the  means  of  performing  cosmocentric 
duty,  and  fails  to  show  any  similar  transformation  of  the 
complementary  service  of  Society.  The  method  of  Religious 
Motive,  in  its  entirety,  would  show  us  the  reconciliation  of 
the  service  of  the  one  with  the  service  of  the  other  by  the 


XX  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

PAGE 

transformation  of  the  service  of  both  into  the  means  of  per- 
forming cosmocentric  duty 177 

Whether  or  no  a  true  and  stable  civilisation  can  be  realised 
depends  upon  whether  or  no  Reason  provides  a  valid 
ground  for  this  transformation.     Position  of  the  theologian .     178 

The  paradox  of  the  method  of  Religious  Motive  .        .        .     179 

INDEX 181 


PART  I 

THE  BASIS  OF  A  PERMANENT 
CIVILISATION 


THE   FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   ANTECEDENTS   OF   CIVILISATION 

The  question  of  the  fate  of  the  existing  civilisa- 
tion of  Europe  and  America  gives  rise  to  one  of 
the  most  interesting  speculations  that  can  occupy 
the  mind,  and  the  white  man  of  to-day  possesses 
the  records  of  so  many  civilisations  that  have 
proved  unstable,  that  the  past  spreads  before  him, 
for  his  learning,  the  vision  of  which  Keble  wrote, 
and  he  sees : 

"  The  giant  forms  of  empires  on  their  way 
To  ruin  :  one  by  one, 
They  tower  and  they  are  gone." 

If  he  is  oppressed  by  the  repetitions  of  history, 
he  may  exclaim,  with  the  melancholy  emperor, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  that  "All  things  move  in  a 
circle."  Or,  perhaps  in  a  braver  mood,  he  may 
say  that  progress  is  intermittent,  alternately  fall- 
ing back  and  anon  coming  forward  at  a  higher 
level.  He  may  believe  that  our  present  civilisa- 
tion is  indeed  better  than  those  that  have  collapsed, 
but  he  fears  that  its  glory  also  will  pass  away,  to 
be  followed,  in  its  turn — in  some  remote  extension 


4  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

of  the  future — by  a  higher  order.  Or,  again,  he  may 
hope  that,  in  spite  of  many  analogies  with  those 
that  have  preceded  it,  our  civihsation  will  not  be 
lost,  will  not  become  merely  a  few  ruins  and  a 
legend,  but  that  its  indefinite  growth  will  prove  it 
to  be  a  permanent  possession  of  the  human  race. 

The  question,  by  its  very  nature,  does  not 
allow  of  mathematical  statement,  nor  will  the 
scientific  methods  applicable  to  chemistry  or 
physics  avail.  For  we  shall  deal  with  the  works 
of  the  human  mind,  and  with  human  affairs,  in  a 
region  wherein  we  shall  see  that  the  immediate 
decay  or  the  endless  growth  of  our  civilisation  is 
not  subject  to  a  fixed  law,  but  depends,  from 
generation  to  generation,  upon  the  course  of  action 
that  is  taken. 

All  that  can  be  ascertained,  even  by  the  most 
successful  investigation,  is  a  distinction  between 
the  constructive  and  the  destructive  forces  ;  the 
discovery  of  the  underlying  principle  that  has 
promoted  the  growth  of  the  civilisations  and 
empires  of  the  past,  and  the  determination  of  the 
cause  of  their  decay.  If  we  can  do  this  success- 
fully, we  shall  possess  nothing  less  than  the  know- 
ledge of  good  and  evil  in  the  State,  and  we  shall 
be  provided  with  an  understanding  of  the  con- 
ditions that  decide  between  the  future  loss  of  the 
civilisation  that  is  our  heritage,  and  its  unlimited 
expansion. 

Such  a  knowledge  is  not  to  be  superficially 
acquired.  When,  for  instance,  we  are  told  that 
the  decline  of  Rome  was  caused  by  the  luxury  and 
effeminacy  of  the  Romans,  we  are  told   exactly 


ANTECEDENTS   OF   CIVILISATION     5 

nothing.  We  require  to  know  how  and  why  such 
"■  a  change  came  over  the  noble  spirit  of  the  Romans 
of  an  earher  day.  'Furthermore,  we  require  to 
know  the  cause  of  the  strange  spectacle  of  a  similar 
occurrence  in  all  the  great  Western  civilisations  of 
the  past — in  Babylon,  Thebes,  and  Athens,  as  well 
as  in  Rome. 

The  cause  of  such  a  change  can  only  be  found 
in  the  fact  that,  in  the  decaying  State,  the  force 
•  that  had  previously  made  for  growth  was  over- 
matched by  that  which  made  for  dissolution.  It 
is  important  to  observe  that  the  phenomena  which 
attend  this  change  are  invariable,  although  they 
appear  under  the  most  dissimilar  circumstances, 
and  in  ages  widely  removed  from  one  another. 
The  forces  themselves,  then,  must  be  constants, 
and  we  must  seek  for  their  origin  far  below  and 
away  from  the  surface  of  recorded  history.  His- 
tory, in  fact,  like  the  world  around  us,  gives  only 
the  resultant  of  these  forces.  An  illustration  may 
be  found  in  the  proposition  that  is  known  in 
mechanics  as  that  of  the  "  parallelogram  of  forces." 
In  this,  two  forces  meet  at  an  angle,  and  lines  are 
drawn  to  represent  them.  The  direction  of  the 
lines  gives  the  direction  of  the  forces,  and  the  lines 
are  drawn  of  a  proper  length  to  represent  the 
magnitude  of  the  forces  relatively  to  one  another. 
A  parallelogram  is  constructed  upon  these  lines, 
and  a  diagonal  is  drawn  from  their  point  of  meet- 
ing to  the  opposite  corner  of  the  parallelogram. 
This  diagonal  will  represent  the  resultant  of  the 
two  forces  under  consideration,  both  in  direction 
and  magnitude. 


6  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Recorded  history,  so  far  as  our  present  purpose 
is  concerned,  gives  only  this  resultant  of  two  com- 
ponent forces,  one  of  these  being  that  which  makes 
for  growth,  and  the  other  that  which  makes  for 
decay.  Of  the  work  of  these  two  forces,  apart 
from  the  resultant,  there  neither  is,  nor  can  be, 
any  record.  A  further  analogy,  that  is  of  the 
greatest  consequence,  must  be  pointed  out.  As  in 
mechanics,  so  in  history,  from  the  resultant  it  is 
impossible  to  divine  either  the  direction  or  the 
magnitude  of  the  components,  for  the  possible 
ratios  of  direction  and  magnitude  that  would  pro- 
duce a  given  resultant  are  innumerable. 

If,  therefore,  we  would  trace  their  operation  in 
history,  we  must  first  find  the  components  them- 
selves. Then,  indeed,  if  our  search  is  successful, 
such  a  discovery  will  enable  us  to  apportion  to 
each  of  them  separately  the  part  that  it  contributes 
to  the  complex  that  we  have  before  us. 

The  forces  that  we  seek,  or  their  more  or  less 
analogous  predecessors,  must  be  ultimately  de- 
scended from  forces  that  have  been  in  operation 
from  the  very  beginning.  We  must,  then,  com- 
mence our  search,  not  where  the  conditions  are 
so  intricate  as  to  make  it  hopeless — not,  that  is, 
even  among  the  records  of  the  most  humble 
civilisation — but  far  away  amid  the  more  simple 
methods  of  animal  life.  For  history  itself  reports 
only  the  end  of  a  vast  journey.  The  journey 
begins  with  the  lowly  beginnings  of  organic  life, 
and  is  continued  in  successive  marches ;  but  it  is 
the  arrival  alone  that  concerns  the  historian. 

When  we  survey  the  journey  as  a  whole,  we 


ANTECEDENTS   OF  CIVILISATION     7 

recognise  the  broad  fact  of  advance  and  growth. 
Nevertheless  it  is  interrupted  occasionally  by  re- 
treat and  decay,  as,  for  example,  in  the  case  of 
the   extinction   of   the    monstrous   fauna   of    the 


Conditions  op  Growth. 


Conditions  of  Decay. 


Miocene  period.  Modern  forms  of  life  are  not 
directly  descended  from  the  forms  that  were  then 
most  prominent ;  another  route  was  taken,  and  so 
the  advance  continued.  Such  periods  of  decay 
show  that  the  journey  has  been  accomplished  in 


8  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

a  series  of  stages,  by  one  method  after  another, 
and  not  continuously.  In  this  respect  the  manner 
of  organic  progress  shows  a  curiously  close  re- 
semblance to  the  course  of  human  invention.  It 
is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that,  w^hen  any 
human  contrivance  has  been  brought  to  a  high 
v  stage  of  practical  usefulness,  further  improvement 
on  the  same  lines  becomes  extremely  difficult. 
A  state  of  high  perfection  is  reached  under  the 
given  conditions,  and  then  a  further  advance  is 
attained,  not  by  improvements  in  the  existing 
mechanism,  but  by  a  fresh  start  under  new  con- 
ditions. Thus,  the  sailing  ship  and  the  old  system 
of  coaching,  when  they  were  superseded  by  steam 
locomotion,  were  as  nearly  perfect  as  their  circum- 
stances permitted.  The  steam  locomotive  seems 
now  to  admit  of  little  further  improvement,  and 
we  are  witnessing  its  supersession  by  electric 
traction  and  the  internal-combustion  engine. 

So  also  is  it  in  the  history  of  organic  advance : 
every  stage  will  be  found  to  be  governed,  not 
primarily  by  a  change  of  form,  but  by  the  domi- 
'  nance  of  a  new  method  or  idea,  whereby  life  can 
be  maintained  on  a  higher  scale;  and  changes  of 
form,  as  in  the  case  of  human  invention,  are  but 
secondary.  The  outstanding  point  is,  that  each 
stage  in  such  a  history  of  invention  is  dominated 
by  an  entirely  fresh  method,  and  that  the  new 
mechanism  is  but  the  expression  thereof. 

Again,  it  will  be  found  that  none  of  the  more 
important  of  the  old  methods  is  discarded  ;  but 
that  the  new  methods,  one  by  one,  are  super- 
imposed  each   upon   its   predecessor.     The   horse 


ANTECEDENTS   OF   CIVILISATION     9 

still  works  for  us,  although  the  steam  locomotive 
is  already  passing  into  a  less  prominent  position, 
and  it  is  still  necessary  for  us  to  use  our  feet, 
although  the  horse  has  been  at  our  service  for 
unnumbered  ages. 

In  like  wise,  it  is  evident  that  the  primitive 
methods  of  organic  existence  are  not  discarded, 
but  that  the  new  method  is  superimposed  upon 
the  old.  Thus  considered,  the  successive  steps  or 
methods  of  maintaining  life  during  the  advance 
from  the  protozoal  organism  to  man  may  be  shown 
as  follows : — 

1.  Reflex  Action. 

2.  Reflex  Action  plus  Instinct. 

3.  Reflex  Action  plus  Instinct  plus  Reason. 

4.  Reflex  Action  plus  Instinct  plus  Reason 
plus  Religious  Motive. 

Here  Reflex  Action,  the  power  of  involuntary 
response  to  an  entirely  external  stimulus,  is  the 
first  and  most  primitive  step.  The  value  of  such 
power  of  response  to  some  simple  but  frequently- 
repeated  external  occurrence  is  obvious.  It  is  by 
the  development  of  Reflex  Action  that  the  limpet 
contrives  to  maintain  life  upon  a  wave-swept  rock. 
The  waves  break  upon  it,  and,  in  response  to  the 
blows,  it  must  cling  intermittently  to  the  rock. 
Thus  life  has  succeeded  in  the  occupation  of  a 
more  extended  area,  an  area  wherein  the  posses- 
sion of  reflex  power  is  not  merely  useful,  but  is 
essential. 

Nevertheless,  that  area  is  strictly  limited.  In 
the  first  place,  the  power  is  only  called  into  action 
by  a  stimulus  external  to  the  reflex  mechanism 


10  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

itself.  Herein  is  to  be  found  the  disability  of 
merely  reflex  power,  as  contrasted  with  Instinct — 
as  contrasted,  that  is,  with  the  possession  of  useful 
inborn  impulses. 

In  the  second  place,  the  reflex  mechanism, 
under  the  pressure  of  its  accustomed  stimulus, 
acts  inevitably  even  though  the  action  may  be 
self-destructive.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  respiratory 
centre  is  called  into  action  by  a  stimulus  that, 
in  its  case,  is  a  deficiency  of  oxygen  in  the  blood. 
The  besom  de  respirer  is  imperative  whether  the 
air  inspired  be  pure  or  impure — carbonic  acid  or 
atmospheric  air.  Granted  the  stimulus,  there  is 
no  choice :  so  far  as  the  reflex  mechanism  is  con- 
cerned, it  is  helplessly  at  the  mercy  of  its  immediate 
surroundings.  In  respect  to  this  second  disability 
Instinct,  the  succeeding  stage,  stands  in  no  contrast 
to  reflex  power.  The  inborn  impulses  of  Instinct 
are  obeyed  just  as  blindly  as  the  external  stimuli 
that  lead  to  reflex  movement.  Thus,  for  example, 
the  tragic  migrations  of  the  Scandinavian  lemming 
sometimes  end  at  last  by  drowning  in  an  attempt 
to  cross  the  sea:  the  roaming  impulse  may  be, 
in  a  majority  of  their  migrations,  most  useful,  but 
it  is  followed  as  unswervingly  as  though  it  were 
a  reflex  action.  Pure  Instinct,  knowing  nothing 
beyond  the  immediate  gratification  of  the  inborn 
impulse,  is  at  the  mercy  of  its  immediate  sur- 
roundings no  less  than  Reflex  Action.  Thus  reflex 
power  and  Instinct  share  the  second  disability  in 
common,  and  it  is  not  until  we  reach  the  develop- 
ment of  Reason — the  power  of  drawing  inferences 
— that  we  find  it  made  good  by  the  conscious  and 


ANTECEDENTS   OF   CIVILISATION     11 

deliberate  pursuit  of  interest.  In  due  course 
Reason  will  be  found  to  be  marred  by  a  disability 
peculiar  to  itself — a  disability  that,  in  its  turn, 
is  only  to  be  made  good  by  the  adoption  of  yet 
another  line  of  advance. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT 

The  higher  plane  of  existence  that  becomes  pos- 
sible with  the  appearance  of  the  method  of  the 
inborn  impulses  of  Instinct  is  most  interesting.  But 
before  we  proceed  it  will  be  well  to  be  definite  as 
to  the  connotation  of  the  words  "pure  Instinct," 
or,  more  briefly,  ''  Instinct,"  when  they  are  used 
in  these  pages.  By  them  we  shall  mean  the  pos- 
session of  inherited  inborn  impulse,  and  the  absence 
of  any  tincture  of  Reason — any  tincture,  that  is, 
of  the  power  of  drawing  inferences. 

Our  interest  is  excited  by  the  fact  that,  when 
we  have  seen  not  only  the  advantages  of  Instinct, 
but  also  the  limitations  of  its  usefulness,  then 
we  shall  perceive  the  exact  manner  in  which  the 
succeeding  stage  of  Reason  came  to  be  of  value. 

We  have  already  compared  these  stages  to  the 
steps  of  human  invention  in  overcoming  the  diffi- 
culties of  locomotion  ;  and  now  the  analogy  may  be 
carried  yet  further.  The  methods  of  dealing  with 
this  difficulty  vary  from  age  to  age,  becoming,  age 
by  age,  more  and  more  efficient.  Nevertheless,  the 
difficulty  itself — the  difficulty  of  locomotion — ever 
remains  the  same  problem.  It  is  only  the  solutions 
that  are  progressive,  and  succeed  one  to  another. 

So  it  is  with  the  stages  of  organic  advance. 

12 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT      13 

The  methods  vary  whereby  life  is  maintained  on 
higher  and  higher  planes,  but  the  problem  where- 
with these  methods  deal  does  not  itself  undergo 
any  change.  What,  then,  is  this  underlying  and 
invariable  difficulty  ? 

The  life  of  the  individual  organism,  as  we  know 
it,  is  a  transitory  possession  :  the  life  of  the  species 
or  Race  is  age-long,  and  the  life  of  the  permanent 
Race  is  dependent  upon  the  acts  of  the  transitory 
Individual.  The  standing  problem  is  to  bring 
about  the  reconciliation  of  these  two — in  effect,  it 
is  to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  Individual  such  in- 
fluences as  shall  lead  him  to  secure  for  the  Race  a 
future  in  which  he  has  no  part  or  lot. 

This  is  the  riddle  of  the  Sphinx  to  which  a 
satisfactory  answer  must  be  returned  under  pain 
of  racial  death.  At  every  stage — under  Reflex 
Power,  under  Instinct,  under  Reason,  under 
Religious  Motive — and  at  all  times,  a  more  or  less 
efficient  modus  vivendi  between  the  transitory  and 
the  permanent  must  be  provided,  for  extinction  is 
the  penalty  of  failure  to  do  so. 

By  what  method,  then,  has  this  problem  been 
answered  by  Instinct  ?  What  are  the  advantages 
of  Instinct  ? 

The  problem  of  the  maintenance  of  the  Race 
has  been  solved  under  the  method  of  Instinct  by 
the  possession  of  certain  inborn  impulses,  inherited 
and  transmissible,  leading  to  the  perpetuation  of 
the  species.  Instinct,  that  is,  transmutes,  in  the 
mind  of  the  individual  animal,  that  which  in  reality 
is  essential  to  racial  survival  into  the  gratification 
of  the  immediate  impulse. 


14  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

To  the  purely  instinctive  animal,  his  real  in- 
terest is  all  unknown.  Knowing  nothing  beyond 
his  impulse,  he  is  wholly  dominated  by  it :  the 
gratification  may  or  may  not  be  to  his  own 
ultimate  advantage,  but  such  a  doubt  cannot  rise 
above  a  mental  horizon  that  is  bounded  by  Instinct. 
Instinct  leaves  no  judgment  to  the  Individual :  the 
impulse  is  inborn  and  is  unquestionable.  Thus 
regarded,  it  will  be  seen  that  Instinct  is  purely  an 
appurtenance  of  the  Race,  acts  in  the  interest  of 
the  Race,  is  inherited  by  every  generation,  and 
again  transmitted,  securing  the  subordination  of 
the  Individual  to  the  Race.  An  individual  end 
appears  to  be  sought,  but  a  racial  end  is  in  reality 
achieved.  Its  advantages  belong  to  the  Race.  But 
what  are  its  disadvantages  ?  How — as  apart  from 
the  species  or  the  Race — does  the  Individual  him- 
self fare  ?  How  far  is  his  interest  consulted,  not 
in  appearance  but  in  reality,  under  the  method  of 
Instinct  ?  Let  us  take  the  more  highly  organised 
species  as  more  relative  to  our  present  argument. 
There  we  find  that  every  individual  is  impelled,  by 
an  Instinct  over  which  he  can  exercise  no  control, 
to  the  care  of  the  young  of  the  species.  The  point 
that  it  is  important  here  to  note  is  that,  beyond 
the  gratification  of  the  parental  Instinct,  the  adult 
individual  is  in  no  way  advantaged  by  these  labours. 
Probably  the  study  of  the  domesticated  animals, 
by  whom  we  are  chiefly  surrounded,  gives  us  no 
adequate  measure  of  the  severity  of  these  labours 
as  they  exist,  let  us  say,  in  the  jungle.  Certainly 
it  can  give  us  no  measure  of  the  dangers  and 
sufferings  there  incurred   at  the   bidding   of  this 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT        15 

tyrannous  Instinct.  Yet  anyone  who  has  watched 
a  pair  of  martins,  under  our  own  eaves,  feeding 
their  young  brood,  persuading  them  to  fly,  and 
preparing  them  for  their  migration,  can  form  some 
conception  of  it.  The  young  beaks  are  incessantly 
open  and  clamorous.  Through  the  livelong  day 
the  parents,  thin,  and  working  to  the  point  of 
exhaustion,  must  hunt  for  the  sake  of  the  insatiable 
young.  This  is  repeated  year  after  year,  through- 
out the  life  of  the  parents,  and  generation  after 
generation  takes  up  the  labour.  The  parents  are 
but  the  tools  of  the  Instinct  that  is  the  possession 
of  the  Race.  Again  the  advantage  of  Instinct  falls 
wholly  to  the  Race  ;  but  here  there  is  a  definite  dis- 
advantage to  the  Individual :  he  is  deceived  by  the 
gratification  of  an  inborn  impulse.  His  true  indi- 
vidual interest  does  not  enter  into  the  scheme 
at  all. 

But  this  instinctive  subordination  of  the  Indi- 
vidual to  the  Race  has  a  further  effect,  an  effect 
in  which  we  can  trace  the  sacrifice  of  the  Indi- 
vidual in  favour  of  the  Race  upon  a  yet  greater 
scale. 

As  a  result  of  the  operation  of  the  two  instincts 
to  which  we  have  referred,  the  animal  world  brings 
forth  and  rears  its  kind  in  numbers  that  far  exceed 
the  limits  of  possible  sustenance.  Thus,  these 
labours,  already  so  costly  to  the  Individual,  bring 
about  and  maintain  at  a  maximum  the  most  ruth- 
less competition.  The  struggle  for  life  begins 
soon  after  life  itself,  and  thereafter  knows  no 
respite.     As  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester  says,^  in  speak- 

^  Kingdom  of  Man,  p.  11.     Constable  &  Co.,  London,  1907. 


16  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

ing  of  the  stress  of  competition  in  the  animal 
world :  "  The  earth's  surface  is  practically  full, 
that  is  to  say,  fully  occupied.  Only  one  pair  can 
grow  up  to  take  the  place  of  the  pair — male  and 
female — which  have  launched  a  dozen,  or  it  may 
be  as  many  as  a  hundred  thousand  young  indi- 
viduals on  the  world.  .  .  .  Animal  population  does 
not  increase."  The  animal  world,  then,  has  long 
ago  reached  the  limit  of  possible  sustenance:  its 
numbers  cannot  increase.  Thus,  while  Instinct 
leads  to  the  most  rapid  reproduction  that  is 
possible  to  any  given  species,  and  moreover  sub- 
ordinates the  lives  of  the  parents  to  the  rearing  of 
the  young  who  are  brought  forth  in  such  pro- 
fusion, only  one  pair  can  grow  up  and  succeed  to 
the  position  of  their  parents.  In  this  multitude  of 
young  no  two  will  be  absolutely  alike :  all  will 
vary  more  or  less  from  one  another.  As  the  com- 
petition is  for  the  absolute  necessities  of  life,  the 
actual  struggle  is  inter  se  among  the  young  of 
every  species.  The  result  is  that  those  two  who 
reach  adult  life  and  take  the  place  of  their  parents 
are  the  two  whose  variations  have  fitted  them 
most  accurately  for  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  will  have  to  live.  The  enormous  majority 
die  before  the  age  of  parenthood  is  reached,  and 
leave  no  mark  upon  the  future  of  their  race.  A 
tiny  minority,  a  chosen  band  selected  by  the 
accuracy  of  their  adaptation  to  their  surroundings, 
alone  survives,  and  through  them  alone  the  Race 
is  continued. 

It  is  difficult  to  realise  the  awful  severity  of 
the  conditions  that  thus  come  into  existence,  but 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT       17 

it  is  easily  perceived  that  the  end  secured  is  the 
organic  advance  and  perfection  of  the  Race.  Once 
again,  this  racial  advantage  is  achieved  at  the  cost 
of  the  Individual.  The  method  of  Instinct  not 
only  condemns  individuals,  after  a  brief  glimpse 
of  life,  to  die  in  myriads,  but  exposes  the  survivors 
to  a  competition  that  is  internecine  and  lifelong. 
We  find  that,  under  this  method,  all  the  advan- 
tages are  made  over  to  the  Race ;  the  suffering  and 
the  effort  to  the  Individual.  We  find  that  this  suf- 
fering shows  itself  in  two  forms,  the  first  being  the 
stress  involved  in  the  rearing  of  the  young  of  the 
species,  and  the  second,  consequent  upon  the  first, 
being  the  stress  involved  in  the  competition  for 
life.  By  force  of  his  inherited  and  inborn  im- 
pulses the  Individual  is  held  in  subjugation  to  the 
Race,  and  thus  Instinct,  answering  the  riddle  of  the 
Sphinx,  brings  about  the  co-ordination  of  the 
transitory  and  the  permanent. 

Leaving  this  aspect  of  the  subject,  we  have 
to  go  a  step  further,  and  to  ask  whether  a  method 
that  is  so  costly  to  the  Individual  is  not  imperfect, 
inherently  and  in  itself?  Is  all  this  suffering  in- 
evitable, or  can  we  discover  an  underlying  flaw 
— the  cause  of  its  imperfection  ? 

Such  a  flaw  is  to  be  found  in  its  waste  of  effort 
— a  wastefulness  that  is  practically  without  a  limit. 
The  myriads  of  the  slain  are  the  product  of  the 
stress  of  ages;  immeasurable  effort  has  been  ex- 
pended on  their  evolution,  and  yet  they  are  cast 
away  as  worthless.  The  history  of  progress  by  the 
method  of  Instinct  is  the  record  of  a  wastefulness 
that  is  beyond  our  powers  of  conception. 

B 


18  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Nevertheless,  this  wastefulness  is  inevitable ;  it 
is  necessarily  inherent  in  the  instinctive  method. 
When  we  grant  the  method,  then  we  find  that 
there  is  no  violation  of  the  well-recognised  parsi- 
mony of  nature.  The  result  is  the  best  that  the 
method  will  admit.  The  flaw  is  in  the  method. 
To  throw  light  upon  this  point  we  must  ask  the 
question :  "  What  can  we  discern  in  the  method 
itself  that  has  necessitated  the  destruction  of  life 
that    has    gone    on    everywhere    throughout    the 


ages 


?" 


In  the  vegetable  world  it  is  clear  that  the  waste 
is  inevitable — that  those  among  whom  it  occurs 
have  not  any  possible  means  of  learning  to  avoid  it. 
To  the  plant,  experience  is  a  word  of  no  meaning 
— advance  is  only  possible  by  survival  of  the  best- 
adapted  variety,  and  destruction  of  the  remainder. 

Neither  does  pure  Instinct — great  as  are  its 
advantages — provide  any  escape  from  this  neces- 
sity. To  the  purely  instinctive  animal,  as  to  the 
plant,  experience  is  still  a  word  of  no  meaning. 
As  we  have  seen,  his  impulses  are  inborn  and  un- 
questionable. He  is  constructed  to  live  or  die 
according  to  their  efficiency.  They  are  inherited ; 
they  belong  to  the  Race ;  no  possible  personal 
experience  can  dictate  to  him  his  course  of  action. 
Instinct  alone  speaks  in  the  imperative  mood. 

Perhaps  our  meaning  will  be  most  happily  illus- 
trated by  the  following  observation,  recorded  by 
Darwin :  ^  ''  Another  and  smaller  species  of  Fur- 

^  Journal  of  Researches  into  the  Natural  History  and  Geology  of  the 
Countries  visited  during  the  Voyage  of  H.M.S.  ^^ Beagle"  round  the 
World,  pp.  95  et  seq.     Murray,  London,  1870. 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT        19 

narius  (F^.  Cenicularms)  resembles  the  oven-bird. 
.  .  .  From  its  affinity  the  Spaniards  call  it  *  casa- 
rita '  (or  little  house-builder),  although  its  nidifica- 
tion  is  quite  different.  The  casarita  builds  its  nest 
at  the  bottom  of  a  narrow  cylindrical  hole,  which 
is  said  to  extend  horizontally  to  nearly  six  feet 
underground.  Several  of  the  country  people  told 
me  that,  when  boys,  they  had  attempted  to  dig 
out  the  nest,  but  had  scarcely  ever  succeeded  in 
getting  to  the  end  of  the  passage.  The  bird 
chooses  any  low  bank  of  firm  sandy  soil  by  the 
side  of  a  road  or  stream.  Here  (at  Bahia  Blanca) 
the  walls  round  the  houses  are  built  of  hardened 
mud ;  and  I  noticed  one,  which  enclosed  a  court- 
yard where  I  lodged,  was  bored  through  by  round 
holes  in  a  score  of  places.  On  asking  the  owner 
the  cause  of  this,  he  bitterly  complained  of  the 
little  casarita,  several  of  which  I  afterwards  ob- 
served at  work.  It  is  rather  curious  to  find  how  in- 
capable these  birds  must  be  of  acquiring  any  notion 
of  thickness,  for  although  they  were  constantly 
flitting  over  the  low  wall,  they  continued  vainly 
to  bore  through  it,  thinking  it  an  excellent  bank 
for  their  nests.  I  do  not  doubt  that  each  bird, 
as  often  as  it  came  to  daylight  on  the  opposite 
side,  was  greatly  surprised  at  the  marvellous  fact." 
Here  is  an  example  of  the  limitation  of  Instinct 
— the  flaw  that  involves  the  wastefulness  of  the 
method.  The  casarita — and  we  may  take  her 
case  as  typical — was  entirely  obedient  to  Instinct. 
Yet  for  want  of  the  faculty  of  drawing  infer- 
ences— in  a  word,  from  the  want  of  Reason — she 
failed  in  her  attempt  at  such  an  essential  as  nidi- 


20  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

fication.  She  flitted  to  and  fro  across  the  wall, 
saw  how  thin  it  was,  but  could  not  draw  the 
inference  that  a  tunnel  driven  into  it  would 
merely  lead  to  daylight  again,  and  that  an  attempt 
at  nesting  there  would  be  labour  in  vain.  Her 
instinct  was  followed  blindly.  Her  faculties  did 
not  include  the  power  of  drawing  inferences,  and 
so  experience  was  of  no  value  to  her.  The  waste 
that  was  going  on  was  inevitable,  and  inherent 
in  the  method  under  which  she  worked. 

It  will,  however,  be  said  that  many  of  the 
animals  that  we  know  do  possess,  in  a  certain 
degree,  the  power  of  reasoning,  and  that  we  are 
overstating  their  helplessness.  This  is  not  only 
true,  but  is  a  fact  of  the  most  profound  signifi- 
cance. The  animals  that  we  know  are  those 
who  have  emerged  victorious  from  ages  of  com- 
petition so  vast  that  they  can  only  be  expressed 
in  terms  of  geological  time.  We  have  some 
grounds  for  a  belief  that  the  destructiveness  of 
what  we  have  called  the  flaw  in  Instinct  was 
operative  on  a  far  greater  scale  in  the  past,  and 
that  the  animals  with  whom  we  are  acquainted 
have  been  the  survivors,  just  in  virtue  of  the 
possession  of  this  modicum  of  Reason.  It  is  prob- 
able that  a  purely  instinctive  fauna  disappeared 
before  the  onset  of  the  very  beginnings  of  Reason, 
unable  to  live  in  the  presence  of  the  competition 
of  animals  whose  methods  were,  to  a  greater  or 
lesser  degree,  not  so  "  wasteful"  as  their  own. 

Thus  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester,  F.R.S.,  writes:^ 
"  The  extinct  mammals  Titanotherium  and  Dino- 

^  Extinct  Animals^  p.  209.    A.  Constable  &  Co.,  1905. 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT        21 

ceras  have  brains  one-eighth  the  bulk  of  living 
mammals  the  same  size,  such  as  rhinoceros  and 
hippopotamus.  So  it  was  with  the  huge  extinct 
reptiles.  In  some  the  head  itself  was  ridiculously 
small  according  to  our  notions  of  customary  pro- 
portion, and  even  in  others,  such  as  Triceratops, 
when  the  bony  and  muscular  parts  were  big,  as 
in  rhinoceros,  yet  the  brain  was  incredibly  small. 
It  could  have  been  passed  all  along  the  spinal 
canal  in  which  the  spinal  cord  lies,  and  was  in  pro- 
portion to  bulk  of  body  a  tenth  the  size  of  that 
of  a  crocodile." 

We  may  fairly  attribute  to  the  small-brained 
creatures  of  past  geological  periods  an  existence 
that,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  was  entirely 
instinctive  in  character.  Their  extinction  seems 
to  have  coincided  in  point  of  time  with  the  earliest 
appearance  of  the  larger-brained  creatures  who 
became  the  primitive  ancestors  of  the  animals 
that  we  see  around  us  to-day.  There  was  a 
"fault"  in  the  line  of  descent,  and  a  fresh  start 
was  made.  The  small-brained — the  flying  lizards 
and  their  congeners — became  extinct,  and,  with 
few  exceptions,  they  were  not  the  ancestors  of 
our  present  fauna.  These  exceptions,  of  which 
we  may  take  the  elephant  as  an  example,  are 
also  instructive,  for  they  appear  to  have  developed 
an  increased  size  of  the  brain  at  the  same  period, 
and  thus  to  have  escaped  extinction.  In  every 
case  the  victory  of  survival  passed  to  the  larger- 
brained  animals  whose  descendants  we  know. 

Furthermore,  we  have  to  recognise  that  these, 
their   descendants,  possess   not    only   the   larger 


22  THE   FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

brain,  but  also  a  tincture  of  Reason.  We  may 
justly  infer  that  some  such  tincture  went  with 
the  larger  brain  among  their  ancestors — that  the 
victory  was  due  to  this  and  to  the  less  **  wasteful " 
method  of  life  that  came  with  it.  To  quote 
Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester  again :  ^  *'  It  is  a  very 
striking  fact  that  it  was  not  in  the  ancestors  of 
man  alone  that  this  increase  in  the  size  of  the 
brain  took  place  at  this  period,  viz.  the  Miocene. 
...  It  seems  that  we  have  to  imagine  that  the 
adaptation  of  mammalian  form  to  the  various 
conditions  of  life  had  in  Miocene  times  reached 
a  point  when  further  alteration  and  elaboration 
of  the  various  types  which  we  know  existed  could 
lead  to  no  advantage.  The  variations  presented 
in  the  struggle  for  existence  presented  no  advan- 
tage— the  'fittest'  had  practically  been  reached, 
and  continued  to  survive  with  little  change. 
Assuming  such  a  relative  lull  in  the  development 
of  mere  mechanical  form,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
opportunity  for  those  individuals  with  the  most 
'educable'  brains  to  defeat  their  competitors 
would  arise.  No  marked  improvement  in  the  in- 
strument being  possible,  the  reward,  the  triumph, 
the  survival  would  fall  to  those  who  possessed 
most  skill  in  the  use  of  the  instrument.  And  in 
successive  generations  the  bigger  and  more  edu- 
cable  brains  would  survive  and  mate,  and  thus 
bigger  and  bigger  brains  would  be  produced." 
This  movement — the  movement  in  the  direction 
of  the  power  of  drawing  inferences — in  the  direc- 

1  The  Kingdom  of  Man,  pp.  22  et  seq.    Constable  &  Co.,  London, 
1907. 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT       23 

tion  of  filling  up  the   gap  in  Instinct   that  was 
seen   by  Darwin  in  the  action  of  the  casarita — 
has   already   gone   far.     This   may   be   illustrated 
in  the  most  interesting  manner  by  the  feats  of 
the    Arctic    Fox,    recorded    as    follows    by    Dr. 
Romanes :  ^    *'  I    have    previously    published    the 
facts  in  my  lecture  before  the  British  Association 
in  1879,  and  therefore  shall  here  quote  from  it. 
Desiring  to  obtain  some  Arctic  Foxes,  Dr.  Rae 
set  various  kinds  of  traps :  but  as  the  foxes  knew 
these  traps  from  previous  experience,  he  was  un- 
successful.    Accordingly  he  set  a  trap  with  which 
the  foxes  in  that  part  of  the  country  were  not 
acquainted.     This  consisted  of  a  loaded  gun  set 
upon   a   stand    pointing   at   the    bait.      A   string 
connected  the  trigger  of  the  gun  with  the  bait, 
so  that  when  the  fox  seized  the  bait  he  discharged 
the  gun,  and   thus  committed   suicide.     In   this 
arrangement    the    gun   was    separated    from    the 
bait  by  a  distance  of  about  thirty  yards,  and  the 
string  which  connected  the  trigger  with  the  bait 
was  concealed  throughout  nearly  its  whole  distance 
in  the  snow.     The  gun-trap  thus  set  was  successful 
in  killing  one  fox,  but  never  in  killing  a  second, 
for  the  foxes  afterwards  adopted   either  of  two 
devices  whereby  to  secure  the  bait  without  injuring 
themselves.     One  of  them  was  to  bite  through  the 
string  at  its  exposed  part  near  the  trigger;  and 
the  other  was  to  burrow  up  to  the  bait  through 
the  snow  at  right  angles  to  the  line  of  fire,  so  that, 

^  Animal  Intelligence^  pp.  429  et  seq.,  by  George  Romanes,  LL.D., 
F.R.S.  Vol.  xli.  of  International  Science  Series.  Kegan  Paul, 
Trench  &  Co.,  1882. 


24  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

although  in  this  way  they  discharged  the  gun,  they 
escaped  with  perhaps  only  a  pellet  or  two  in  the 
nose.  Now  both  of  these  devices  exhibited  a 
wonderful  degree  of  what  I  think  must  fairly  be 
called  reasoning." 

The  conclusion  is  indisputable. 

Fox  No.  1  is  shot  from  a  distance  of  thirty 
yards.  And,  although  it  is  not  stated  as  a  fact, 
we  may  assume  that  the  occurrence  was  watched 
by  Fox  No.  2,  and  that  it  was  unprecedented  in 
his  experience.  Nevertheless  he  is  able  to  draw 
several  inferences  from  the  facts  before  him.  A, 
He  infers  that  the  explosion  is  caused  by  pulling 
the  string.  B.  Thence  he  infers  that,  if  he  severs 
the  string,  he  may  safely  take  the  bait.  C.  He 
also  infers  that  the  only  point  at  which  he  may 
safely  gnaw  through  the  string  is  behind  the  place 
where  the  explosion  appeared,  that  is,  near  the 
trigger.  Fox  No.  3  has  also  watched,  and  makes 
the  inference  that,  if  he  seizes  the  bait  from  below, 
he  will  be  out  of  the  line  of  danger. 

This  is  a  clear  example  of  the  avoidance  of  the 
"  wastefulness  "  of  pure  Instinct.  Fox  No.  2  and 
Fox  No.  3  survive,  not  in  virtue  of  any  variation 
of  form,  but  because  they  were  able  to  draw  infer- 
ences from  their  recent  experience. 

This  brings  us  definitely  to  Reason.  The  animal 
survivors  from  past  epochs  are  those  in  whom  we 
can  see  a  new  faculty  arising  to  remedy  the  defect 
in  Instinct.  Just  as,  near  the  bottom  of  the  ladder, 
the  power  of  inborn  instinctive  action  has  been 
added  to  Reflex  Power,  so  the  power  of  rational 
action — action,  that  is,  which  is  based  upon  the 


THE   METHOD   OF   INSTINCT        25 

faculty  of  drawing  inferences — has  been  superadded 
to  Instinct. 

The  instinctive  method  of  life  has  been  success- 
ful in  subordinating  the  Individual  to  the  Race, 
but  owing  to  its  wastefulness  it  is  being  superseded 
by  another.  The  method  that  follows  may  be  a 
brilliant  gain  in  every  other  way,  but,  if  it  fails  to 
enable  that  which  is  passing  to  act  on  behalf  of 
that  which  is  permanent,  no  method,  no  species,  no 
race,  no  civilisation  or  empire  can  endure. 

Thus,  the  issue  before  us  is  tremendous,  for  we 
now  pass  on  to  qonsider  the  sufficiency  of  the  method 
of  pure  Heason. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  METHOD   OF   REASON 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  Data  of  Ethics, 
chaps,  xiii.  and  xiv.,  while  recognising  the  defects 
of  existing  human  nature,  nevertheless  looks  for- 
ward to  a  time  when  the  survival,  in  the  matter  of 
parenthood,  of  those  who  show  the  greatest  dis- 
position to  subordinate  their  own  interests  to  the 
interests  of  the  race  shall  have  led  to  the  evolution 
of  a  society  in  which  the  individuals  will  find  their 
greatest  pleasure  in  that  subordination.  An  im- 
proved or  perfected  human  nature  is  to  emerge,  in 
which  this  subordination,  necessarily  instinctive 
in  character,  will  be  accompanied  by  a  sense  of 
gratification  analogous  to  that  which  obtains  among 
the  higher  animals  when  the  parent  subordinates 
himself  to  the  nurture  and  protection  of  his  young. 

It  is  evident  that  this  view  assumes  the  drift 
and  tendency  of  human  evolution  to  be  still  in  the 
direction  of  an  ever  closer  approximation  towards 
the  perfection  of  the  method  of  Instinct. 

This  method  would  become  impossibly  cum- 
brous were  it  asked  to  provide  an  impulse  that 
would  spring  into  useful  action  in  every  emergency, 
and  with  every  change  of  environment.  But  the 
power  of  drawing  inferences  provides  a  short-cut 
to   a  position  that,   without   being  cumbrous,  is 


THE   METHOD   OF  REASON        27 

equally  advantageous.  It  is  the  appearance  of  a 
new  invention,  w^orking  by  a  new  method. 

Mr.  Spencer's  view  ignores  the  evolutionary 
value  and  ever-increasing  power  of  Reason  as 
compared  with  Instinct.  It  ignores  the  fact  that, 
granted  a  sufficiently  long  continuance  of  this 
relative  rate  of  growth,  a  time  must  come  when 
their  relative  positions  will  be  reversed — when 
Reason  will  have  overtaken  Instinct — when  Reason 
will  no  longer  be  the  slave,  subservient  to  the 
gratification  of  the  impulses  of  Instinct,  but  will 
take  precedence  as  the  master,  holding  those 
impulses  under  control.  It  ignores  the  obvious 
reflection  that  an  animal  thus  endowed  with  un- 
controlled power  of  rational  action  would  presently 
make  himself  the  master  of  the  world,  and  that 
the  gulf  between  him,  the  primarily  rational,  and 
the  others,  the  primarily  instinctive,  would  be  so 
enormous  that  the  disparity  would  appear  to  be 
one  of  kind  rather  than  of  degree.  If  we  recognise 
that  the  human  being  has  become  the  overlord  of 
creation,  we  must  also  recognise  that  his  position 
is  itself  due  to  the  fact  that,  in  him.  Reason  has  at 
last  attained  the  overlordship  over  Instinct. 

The  immensity  of  the  power  that  is  conferred 
by  this  faculty  is  seen  in  the  position  that  man, 
pre-eminently  the  reasoning  animal,  holds  as  con- 
trasted with  the  rest  of  the  organic  world.  Except 
in  this  particular — the  power  of  drawing  a  conclu- 
sion from  premisses — he  is  the  feeblest  of  all  the 
more  highly  organised  creatures.  His  skin  is  un- 
protected, he  is  atrophied  in  tooth  and  claw,  and 
he  is  not  even  possessed  of  speed  in  flight.    As  has 


28  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

been  pointed  out  in  an  article  in  the  Spectator,  the 
syllogism  has  become  his  only  sword  and  his  only 
shield.  Yet  his  magnificent  power  of  drawing 
inferences  has  placed  him  at  the  head  of  the 
organic  world,  and  the  splendour  of  his  achieve- 
ments shines  in  history. 

Nevertheless,  if  his  dependence  upon  Reason  is 
thus  absolute,  if  that  is  to  be  his  only  support, 
then  the  method  of  Reason,  unlike  the  method  of 
Instinct,  should  have  no  inherent  flaw — else,  as 
his  position  is  exalted,  so  also  must  it  be  precarious. 
His  method  must,  that  is,  have  no  racial  in- 
adequacy, for,  in  the  alternative,  all  purely  rational 
civilisations,  one  after  another,  are  foredoomed  to 
decay. 

The  shadows  of  history,  not  less  marked  than 
its  splendours,  suggest  that  there  is  in  the  back- 
ground the  possibility  of  inherent  limitation — of 
something  transient — in  the  value  of  that  method. 

We  shall  use  the  words  "Reason"  or  "pure 
Reason"  to  connote  the  power  of  drawing  infer- 
ences— the  logical  faculty,  untouched  by  Instinct 
from  below,  and  dissociated  from  the  Religious 
Motive  above  it.  This  may  seem  wilfully  to  dis- 
regard two  obvious  objections :  firstly,  that  Reason 
does  not  exist  as  divorced  from  Instinct  even 
among  the  most  civilised  men ;  and  secondly,  that 
Reason  is  generally  found  in  conjunction  with  some 
form  or  other  of  Religious  Motive.  We  can  only 
refer  the  reader  to  what  we  have  already  pointed 
out  when  we  compared  recorded  history  to  the 
resultant  in  the  parallelogram  of  forces.  Our 
object  is  to  discover  the  value  of  the  components. 


THE   METHOD   OF  REASON        29 

If  recorded  history — if  the  world  around  us — is 
regarded  as  a  complex  of  Instinct,  Reason,  and 
Religious  Motive,  and  if  our  object  is  to  discover 
the  values  of  these  components,  then  it  is  evident 
that  the  proposed  distinction  is  justified. 

It  will  be  remembered  that,  when  writing  of 
Instinct,  we  pointed  out  that  it  was  essentially  a 
property  of  the  Race ;  not  necessarily  acting  to  the 
advantage  of  the  individual  animal,  but  securing 
his  subordination  to  the  interests  of  the  species. 
We  saw  that  the  gratification  of  his  impulse  was 
the  lure  that  led  him  on :  we  saw  the  Race  acting 
in  its  own  interest  by  means  of  these  impulses,  and 
using  the  Individual  as  an  instrument. 

How  do  these  things  stand  when  we  compare 
the  method  of  Reason — the  method  of  humanity — 
with  this,  the  method  of  Instinct  ? 

In  the  first  place,  we  find  that  we  have  not  to 
deal  with  a  stereotyped  inheritance  such  as  Instinct. 
The  rational  being  has  attained  the  power  of 
"  looking  before  and  after,"  and  is  able  to  discern 
in  what  direction  an  "enlightened  self-interest" 
does  in  fact  lead  him  during  his  own  lifetime. 
The  advantage  of  the  power  of  drawing  inferences 
is  not  limited  to  the  Race,  as  is  the  advantage  of 
the  foregone  conclusions  of  inborn  impulse.  The 
scope  of  Reason  is  wide.  It  is  the  Individual  him- 
self who  reviews  his  circumstances,  and  who  draws 
his  own  inference.  The  advantage  conferred  by 
Reason  stands  continuously  and  inevitably  at  the 
service  of  him  who  determines  his  own  course  of 
action  by  its  means — it  waits,  that  is,  at  the  service 
of  the  Individual.     Thus  pure  Reason  does  not, 


30  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

per  se,  subordinate  its  owner  to  any  considerations 
outside  his  own  interest.  With  the  supersession 
of  Instinct,  and  the  appearance  of  the  new  regime, 
the  supreme  power  passes  from  the  Race  to  the 
Individual. 

In  the  second  place,  just  as  the  purely  reflex 
world  knows  nothing  of  inborn  impulse,  and  the 
purely  instinctive  world  knows  nothing  of  infer- 
ence, so  it  is  only  in  the  world  of  Reason  that 
the  possibility  of  conduct  that  is  to  the  ultimate 
interest  of  the  Individual  appears  upon  the  scene. 
Inferential  conduct  stands  in  the  same  relation  to 
Reason  as  action  springing  from  impulse  stands 
to  Instinct.  Thus  it  comes  about  that,  just  as  in 
dealing  with  Instinct  we  spoke  of  action  springing 
from  impulse,  so  now,  in  dealing  with  Reason,  we 
shall  have  to  speak  of  action  springing  from  the 
inferences  of  the  Individual — that  is,  of  self-inter- 
ested action,  or  "interest." 

Reason,  acting  in  the  interest  of  the  Individual, 
has  modified  already,  and  profoundly,  the  com- 
petitive stress  of  human  life  as  compared  with  that 
which  obtains  among  animals.  We  have  already 
seen  (page  16)  that,  in  the  world  of  Instinct, 
reproduction  outruns  the  limits  of  possible  suste- 
nance, and  that  multiplication  has  long  ago  antici- 
pated the  whole  supply  of  nourishment.  Animal 
numbers  cannot  increase,  and  yet  Instinct,  careless 
of  the  fact,  still  carries  on  the  work  of  reproduction 
at  the  highest  pressure. 

Among  ourselves,  Reason  has  actually  reversed 
these  conditions.  We  have  no  experience  of  the 
desperate  efforts  whereby  life  is  maintained  in  the 


THE   METHOD   OF   REASON        31 

jungle  or  in  the  ocean.  The  animal  is  dependent 
upon  the  food  that  it  finds.  Man,  drawing  an 
inference  from  his  observation  of  the  processes  of 
nature,  sows  the  seed  and  reaps  the  harvest.  His 
gift  of  Reason  is  the  true  means  whereby  he 
subdues  the  jungle  and  the  desert,  and  discovers 
vast  areas,  fertile  and  unoccupied,  that  await  his 
coming.  To  him  the  possible  limits  of  sustenance 
outrun  reproduction. 

Nevertheless,  to  man  also,  the  two  essential 
stresses  of  life  remain  unaltered.  They  are  per- 
manent elements  in  life,  although  the  severity  of 
the  stress  may  be  reheved.  The  kaleidoscope  of 
existence  has  been  turned,  and  the  picture  has 
changed  ;  but  it  is  still  made  up  of  the  same  pieces 
of  glass.  The  possible  supply  of  food  may  have 
outrun  reproduction ;  unoccupied  areas  may  await 
coming  generations ;  but  in  life,  as  we  know  it, 
the  stress  still  arises  from  the  same  two  causes 
that  are  operative  in  the  world  of  Instinct.  These 
are  still,  firstly,  the  competition  existing  among 
those  contemporaries  to  whom  the  present  belongs, 
and,  secondly,  the  effort  and  self-denial  required 
in  the  nurture  and  care  of  our  children,  to  whom 
the  future  belongs. 

Evidently  then,  the  question  arises :  "  How 
will  Reason,  having  already  thus  modified  these 
permanent  stresses,  next  proceed  to  deal  with 
them  ? " 

The  rational  manner  in  which  these  two  stresses 
might  be  relieved  has  been  in  the  past,  and  is  at 
present,  the  subject  of  much  speculation.  When 
we  survey  this  speculation  broadly,  we  encounter 


32  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

two  schools  of  thought.  Each  school,  recognising 
the  evils  that  would  attend  the  abolition  of  one  of 
these  stresses,  urges  the  abolition  or  modification 
of  the  other,  in  order  that  the  incidence  of  the 
first  might  be  made  more  tolerable.  But  the  two 
schools  are  at  variance  on  the  question :  "  Which 
is  the  stress  that  should  be  modified,  in  order  to 
make  the  burden  of  the  other  more  tolerable  ? " 

One  of  them,  the  older  school,  recognising  the 
strain  upon  the  Individual  that  is  caused  by 
competition,  urges  that  it  would  become  more 
tolerable  if  the  reproductive  activity  of  the  Race 
were  modified  and  lessened.  The  other,  the  newer 
school,  recognising  the  racial  evils  and  dangers 
attendant  upon  a  low  birthrate,  urges  the  abolition 
of  the  competitive  system  of  life,  not  only  to 
secure  relief  from  the  stress  involved,  but  also  in 
order  that  the  provision  of  future  generations  may 
be  less  burdensome. 

Clearly  we  have  to  examine  separately  the 
incidence  of  these  two  stresses,  and  to  determine 
the  purely  rational  manner  of  dealing  with  them. 
In  each  case,  as  we  have  already  shown,  pure 
Reason  must  advance  along  the  lines  indicated  by 
the  interest  of  the  Individual,  for  the  supreme 
power  belongs  to  him. 

We  ask  therefore,  alike  with  regard  to  the 
stress  of  competition  and  the  stress  of  reproduc- 
tion ;  "  Whither  do  his  interests  lead  him  ? " 

Here  it  is  necessary  to  guard  ourselves  against 
a  verbal  confusion  that  might  easily  lead  to  con- 
fusion of  thought.  The  term  **  Individual "  needs 
no  definition,  but  the  case  is  otherwise  with  the 


THE   METHOD   OF  REASON        33 

words  "Society"  and  "the  Race."  These  terms 
are  equally  open  to  connote  the  sum  of  existing 
individuals ;  the,  as  yet,  unborn  generations  of  the 
future;  or  both  together.  As  commonly  used, 
the  terms  stand  for  at  least  two  distinct  ideas. 

In  considering  the  interest  of  the  individual  in 
relation  to  that  of  unborn  generations  we  shall 
have  frequent  occasion  to  use  the  words  "  Society" 
and  "  Race."  It  is  well,  therefore,  to  define  the 
precise  meaning  that  will  be  attached  to  these 
words.  We  have  reserved,  and  shall  reserve,  the 
word  "  Society  "  to  express  the  sum  of  individuals 
co-existing  at  any  given  time,  and  the  word  "  Race  " 
to  express  the  sum  of  the,  as  yet,  unborn  genera- 
tions. This  use  of  these  words  "  Society "  and 
"  Race  "  will  be  rigidly  adhered  to,  for  the  distinc- 
tion will  be  found  to  be  one  of  capital  importance. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  conception  of  Society, 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  are  using  the  word,  is 
the  offspring  of  Reason,  and  unknown  amid  the 
uses  of  Instinct.  In  the  region  of  Instinct  we  find 
only  the  Individual  and  the  Race :  even  the  herd 
is  an  institution  of  racial  utility,  while  racial  ideas 
are  explicitly  shut  out  from  the  meaning  that  we 
attach  to  the  word  "  Society."  Thus,  with  the 
advent  of  Reason,  a  new  idea — a  new  factor — 
comes  before  us,  to  which  due  place  must  be 
given,  and  we  shall  have  to  consider  the  inter- 
action of  the  interest  of  the  Individual  with  the 
interest  of  Society,  as  well  as  with  the  interest 
of  the  Race. 

And  here  a  most  interesting  position  is  revealed, 
for  we  find  that  the  consideration  of  the  relative 

c 


34  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

interests  of  the  Individual  and  Society  resolves 
itself  into  the  examination  of  the  stress  of  com- 
petition, just  as  does  the  consideration  of  the 
relative  interests  of  the  Individual  and  the  Race 
resolve  itself  into  the  examination  of  the  stress  of 
reproduction. 

It  is  evident  that  it  is  in  contact  with  Society 
— and  with  Society  alone — that  the  Individual 
incurs  the  stress  of  competition ;  the  rivalry,  that 
is,  between  any  given  individual  and  those,  his 
contemporaries,  who  compete  with  him.  In  a 
word,  the  competitive  stress  divides  the  interest  of 
the  Individual,  not  from  that  of  the  Race,  but 
from  that  of  Society.  In  the  same  manner  it  is 
evidently  in  the  matter  of  reproduction — and  of 
reproduction  alone — that  the  Individual  and  the 
Race  come  into  contact  with  one  another.  The 
other  stress,  that  of  competition,  does  not  enter, 
for  it  would  be  absurd  to  regard  the  existing 
individual  as  in  a  state  of  competition  with 
generations  that  are  yet  to  come.  In  a  word,  the 
reproductive  stress  separates  the  interest  of  the 
Individual,  not  from  that  of  Society,  but  from 
that  of  the  Race. 

The  first  of  the  two  succeeding  chapters  (Chap. 
IV)  will  be  devoted  to  the  consideration  of  the 
interest  of  the  Individual,  so  far  as  social  compe- 
tition is  concerned,  and  the  next  (Chap.  V )  to  the 
consideration  of  the  interest  of  the  Individual,  so 
far  as  the  reproduction  of  the  Race  is  concerned. 
In  each  case.  Reason  being  at  the  service  of  the 
Individual,  we  shall  have  to  answer  the  questions : 
**  In  what  direction  will  the  Individual  be  carried 


THE   METHOD   OF  REASON        35 

by  a  strictly  rational  regard  for  his  own  interest  ? 
Can  he  eliminate  these  two  separate  stresses  from 
his  experience  in  life  ? " 

After  that,  in  the  third  succeeding  chapter 
(Chap.  VI),  we  shall  undertake  an  estimation  of 
the  relative  importance  of  the  two  conclusions  that 
we  shall  have  reached,  and,  in  doing  so,  our 
attention  will  be  engaged  by  finding  that  this 
discussion  resolves  itself  into  the  consideration  of 
the  relative  interests  of  Society  and  the  Race,  and 
that  we  have  to  decide,  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Individual,  between  their  claims  to  precedence. 

Race 


Individual  *  ^  Society 


We  shall  then,  in  the  fourth  succeeding  chapter 
(Chap.  VII),  be  in  a  position  to  review  all  the 
ground  before  us,  under  this,  the  regime  of  Reason, 
and  to  ask  whether,  considering  the  nature  of  the 
conclusion  reached,  the  method  of  pure  Reason 
can  be  justified.  Pure  Reason  itself  will  come  up 
for  judgment.  If,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  rational 
interests  of  the  Individual  are  not  found  to  be 
concurrent  with  the  advantage  of  the  Race ;  if, 
that  is,  they  are  not  found  to  afford  a  sufficient 
basis  for  a  stable  civilisation,  then  we  shall  begin 
to  understand  the  failures  recorded  in  history,  and 
the  vaunted  method  of  pure  Reason  will  stand 
condemned. 


CHAPTER  IV 

REASON  IN  RELATION  TO  COMPETITION:  THE 
INTEREST  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  RELATION 
TO   SOCIETY 

Society,  thus  defined,  may  be  regarded  as  an 
organism  with,  as  it  were,  the  same  expectation  of 
life  as  the  average  Individual.  In  point  of  duration 
in  time  there  is  no  disparity  between  them. 

How  does  the  fact  of  this  equality  affect  their 
relative  interests?  Evidently  it  dominates  the 
situation.  If  the  interests  of  both  are  confined 
within  the  same  space  of  time,  if  there  be  no  need 
to  make  provision  for  a  future  that  neither  will 
see — that  is,  if  there  is  no  occasion  for  present 
self-denial — then  their  interests  will  not  be  at  vari- 
ance by  any  antecedent  necessity;  they  may  be 
capable  of  reconciliation,  and  pure  Reason  may  be 
a  sufficient  guide. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  interest  of  the  Race 
is  in  no  way  involved  herein.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  reconciliation  of  the  interest  of  the 
Individual  with  that  of  Society  would  only  require 
the  abolition  of  competition.  We  have,  then,  to 
deal  only  with  the  problem  of  the  abolition  of 
competition,  and  it  is  incumbent  upon  us  to  do  so 
from  a  purely  rational  point  of  view,  eliminating 
all  that  is  either  instinctive  or  disinterested. 

What  has  been  hitherto  the  action  of  Reason 

36 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        87 

in  dealing  with  the  strife  between  any  given  in- 
dividual and  the  society  that  surrounds  him  ? 

We  have  already  pointed  out  (pp.  30  et  seq.) 
that  it  has  been  in  the  direction  of  modifying  and 
softening  this  rivalry,  and  that  it  has  done  so  with 
such  effect  that  we  are  able  to  increase  in  numbers, 
and  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  wastefulness  and 
severity  that  obtain  under  Instinct,  and  make  com- 
petition there  an  internecine  contest  for  dear  life 
itself.  Nor  do  we  see  any  prospect  of  a  return  to 
this  state  of  things.  Are  we  threatened  by  any 
material  appreciation  in  the  value  of  food  ?  The 
chemical  fixation  of  nitrogen  may  be  accom- 
plished. Are  we  threatened  by  a  failure  of  fuel  ? 
We  have  the  prospect  of  being  able  to  unlock 
the  boundless  stores  of  intra-atomic  energy. 

The  power  of  Reason  is  so  great,  indeed,  that 
the  prospect  before  us  is  one  in  which  we  see  the 
probability  of  moving  yet  further  away  from  the 
severity  of  instinctive  conditions.  Resulting  from 
the  rational  faculty,  the  movement  itself  is  evolu- 
tionary in  character,  and  can  be  stayed  only  by 
a  faculty  even  more  commanding  than  Reason. 
Already  the  competition  that  we  have  to  consider, 
both  now  and  in  the  prospect  before  us,  is  no  longer 
for  the  possession  of  life  itself,  but  for  those  posses- 
sions that  seem  to  make  life  of  value. 

Although  this  immense  change  has  already  been 
wrought  by  Reason,  nevertheless  the  interest  of 
the  Individual  is  still  at  variance  with  that  of  his 
fellows,  the  rivalry  of  life  still  continues,  and  com- 
petition is  still  one  of  the  two  great  factors  of  the 
stress  that  is  the  experience  of  every  one. 


38  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

But  why  should  Reason  rest  content  with  this 
modification  ?  Why  should  it  stop  with  its  work 
half  done  ?  Why  should  it  not  devote  itself  to 
the  complete  cessation  of  the  competitive  stress, 
and  to  the  substitution  of  a  non-competitive  system 
of  life  ?  Reason,  as  we  have  seen,  first  achieved 
its  predominance  by  reducing  the  limitless  waste- 
fulness that  is  inherent  in  the  method  of  Instinct. 
It  is  in  this  direction  that  Reason  is  still  operative, 
and  the  two  questions  arise  :  *'  Is  it  to  the  interest 
of  the  Individual  to  abolish  competition  ?  "  and  then, 
if  that  be  answered  in  the  affirmative,  we  have  to 
ask :  "  Is  it  in  his  power  to  abolish  competition  ?  Is 
Reason  competent  to  secure  this  end  ? " 

In  answering  the  first  of  these  questions,  we 
find  the  assertion  that  the  elimination  of  the  com- 
petitive struggle  would  be  an  advantage  is  met  by 
dissent,  and  frequently  by  a  sense  of  horror.  This 
feeling  is  found  not  only  among  the  successful — 
the  "haves"  as  opposed  to  the  unsuccessful,  the 
"  have-nots  " — it  is  found  also  among  the  ''  have- 
nots  "  ;  it  overrides  the  distinction  of  class.  It 
is  not,  even  among  the  "  haves,"  primarily  a  selfish 
feeling.  On  the  contrary,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it 
is  found  especially  and  essentially  among  the  least 
selfish  members  of  the  community.  It  speaks  with 
power  and  conviction,  and,  in  its  presence,  Reason 
seems  to  have  lost  some  of  its  old-time  cogency. 
The  authority  of  Reason  is  not  weakened,  and  yet, 
when  all  is  admitted,  it  does  not  prevail  against 
the  sentiment  of  aversion. 

We  shall  find  the  explanation  in  the  fact  that 
the  present   chapter  is  concerned  only  with  the 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        39 

method  of  Reason — the  method  that  judges  by 
interest.  A¥hen  tested  by  the  standard  of  interest, 
a  non-competitive  form  of  society  satisfies  every 
requirement.  It  is  only  when,  in  a  later  chapter, 
we  come  to  measure  it  by  another  standard — a 
standard  of  which  interest  knows  nothing — that 
we  shall  find  our  horror  is  justified. 

As  we  might  expect  under  these  circumstances, 
when  we  examine  the  arguments  put  forward  by 
those  who,  professedly  on  the  ground  of  interest, 
are  the  opponents  of  the  demand  for  the  elimina- 
tion of  competition,  we  find  that  they  are  rather 
the  expression  of  this  sentiment  of  aversion  than  a 
logical  demonstration  of  any  irrational  quality  in 
that  demand. 

Thus  it  has  been  urged  by  many  that  the  de- 
fects of  existing  human  nature  are  such  as,  in  the 
absence  of  competition,  would  create  evils  far 
greater  and  less  remediable  than  those  of  which 
all  men  disapprove  in  the  existing  arrangements 
of  the  world.  Of  such  evils,  slavery  is  instanced. 
The  defects  of  existing  human  nature,  it  is  said, 
are  such  that,  in  the  absence  of  the  stimulus  of 
competition,  the  necessary  work  of  Society  could 
only  be  carried  on  by  the  rule  of  a  disciplined  army 
of  civil  officials.  Before  them,  the  wishes  of  any 
Individual  would  be  as  nought  in  comparison  with 
the  claims  of  Society,  and  the  final  result  would  be 
a  revival  of  despotism  in  the  form  of  bureaucracy. 

This  is  undisputable.  But,  in  the  first  place, 
we  must  point  out  that  the  incubus  of  a  defective 
human  nature  is  a  constant  element  in  any  form 
of  Society.     If  we  compare  any  competitive  form 


40  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

with  any  non-competitive  form,  it  is  a  weight 
that  is  present  in  both  scales  of  the  balance.  In 
the  second  place,  it  will  be  seen  that  by  the  pro- 
posed co-ordination  of  the  work  that  is  necessary 
to  carry  on  Society,  an  economy  of  effort  would 
be  secured ;  and  that  Reason  would  be  pursuing 
its  old  course.  In  other  words,  the  slavery  in- 
volved would  be  less  than  the  aggregate  of  servi- 
tude that  is  inevitable  if  the  despot  is  competition 
itself — the  servitude  that  is  inherent  in  the  very 
idea  of  competition  among  a  multitude  of  indi- 
viduals. Friction  leads  to  an  inevitable  waste  of 
energy  in  the  working  of  any  machine,  but  the 
loss  is  greater  in  proportion  to  the  number  of 
bearings  through  which  it  is  distributed.  Thus, 
from  a  purely  interested  point  of  view,  it  is  better 
to  serve  a  despotic  bureaucracy,  than  to  live  in 
competition  with  all  the  members  of  surrounding 
Society. 

That  all  objections,  such  as  this  concerning 
slavery,  are  brought  forward  in  good  faith  is  un- 
questionable. But  it  is  also  unquestionable  that 
the  aversion  felt  is  stronger  than  the  arguments 
that  seek  to  justify  it.  The  revulsion  of  feeling 
arises,  in  fact,  from  a  negation  that  is  deeper  and 
wider  than  any  argument  based  upon  interest — 
a  negation  whose  real  character  is  generally  un- 
recognised in  the  minds  of  the  writers. 

Another  class  of  objectors  urges  that,  even 
though  a  non-competitive  society  were  successful 
in  reducing  its  internal  friction  to  a  minimum, 
still  it  would  be  only  the  material  welfare  and 
aesthetic   enjoyment   of  its  members   that  would 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        41 

be  secured,  and  that,  not  indeed  an  organic  change, 
but  a  profound  degeneration  of  individual  char- 
acter would  be  the  result.  It  is  urged  that,  as 
Herbert  Spencer  says,^  "  The  welfare  of  a  society 
and  the  justice  of  its  arrangements  are  at  bottom 
dependent  on  the  character  of  its  members." 

This  again  is  indisputable.  But,  considered  in 
a  strictly  rational  manner,  it  will  be  seen  that  it 
is  begging  the  question.  The  character  of  the 
members  of  a  non- competitive  community,  how- 
ever degenerate  and  contemptible,  in  the  absence 
of  the  stimulus  of  competition,  it  might  become 
from  our  point  of  view,  would  be  exactly  the 
character  necessary  for  the  welfare  and  smooth 
working  of  such  a  society.  All  that  it  requires 
is  a  purely  rational  character,  looking  only  and 
strictly  to  material  welfare  and  aesthetic  enjoy- 
ment. Anything  beyond  would  create  friction 
in  such  a  society,  until,  in  the  presence  of  its 
despotism,  it  had  undergone  the  atrophy  of 
disuse.  The  unselfish  and  self-reliant  qualities, 
alike  essential  to  any  form  of  competitive  society, 
would  not  only  cease  to  be  essential,  they  would 
be  detrimental,  and  a  "degenerate"  character 
would  be  the  essential.  Degeneration  of  charac- 
ter as  we  esteem  it — yes,  hopeless  degeneration  as 
we  esteem  it.  Considered,  however,  in  its  strictly 
rational  aspect,  such  a  degeneration  of  character 
is  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  objection. 

Yet  when  we  speak  of  such  "degeneration" 
we  are  again  brought  back  to  the  revulsion  of 
feeling  to  which  we  have  already  referred.     It  is 

^  The  Man  versus  the  State,  p.  39.     Watts  &  Co.,  London,  1909. 


42  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

a  sentiment  from  which  we  cannot  escape.  To 
admit  that  it  is  irrational  is  not  to  remove  it. 
Indeed,  the  more  nakedly  the  rational  character  of 
a  non-competitive  society  is  exposed,  the  more 
intense  is  the  revulsion  that  it  inspires. 

This  attitude  of  dissent,  being  supra-rational 
in  quality,  cannot  be  removed  by  purely  rational 
considerations.  It  is  dictated  and  enforced  by  a 
power  superimposed  over  that  of  pure  Reason. 
The  nature  and  indispensability  of  this  power, 
superior  to  that  of  pure  Reason,  will  be  discussed 
later:  its  intervention  is  not  admissible  while  we 
are  discussing  the  method  of  Reason.  For  the 
present  it  is  enough  to  have  shown  that  the 
denials  of  the  advantage  of  a  liberation  from 
competition  are  in  truth  based  upon  this,  and 
that  therefore,  in  pure  Reason,  they  are  not  to 
the  point.  Nowhere  do  they  traverse  the  obvious 
fact  that,  carrying  the  work  of  Reason  to  its 
logical  conclusion,  an  entire  relief  from  the  in- 
cubus of  competition  would  be  to  the  interest 
of  every  individual.  The  considerations  of  pure 
Reason,  that  is  to  say,  lead  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  elimination  of  competition,  if  possible, 
would  serve  alike  the  interest  of  the  Individual 
and  of  Society. 

Seeing,  then,  that  it  is  genuinely  to  the  interest 
of  the  Individual  to  abolish  competition,  we  ask  at 
once :  "  Is  it  in  his  power  to  do  so  ?  Is  it  pos- 
sible?" 

You  cannot  get  rid  of  competition  except  by 
getting  rid  of  that  for  the  sake  of  which  competi- 
tion is  carried  on.     Individual  ownership  of  the 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        43 

things  that  seem  to  make  life  worth  living  is 
evidently  the  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  the 
realisation  of  this  object.  The  runners  compete 
for  a  prize.  To  put  an  end  to  the  stress  of  the 
race,  to  reduce  it  to  a  walk-over  that  shall  be  a 
strain  upon  none,  the  prize  must  not  go  to  any 
one  of  them.  It  must  be  the  acquisition  of  all, 
and  owned  equally. 

The  economic  system  which  proposes  that  col- 
lective ownership  should  be  substituted  for  private 
property  is  known  at  the  present  moment  by  the 
name  of  "  Socialism,"  and  the  ordinary  phrase  by 
which  it  is  defined  is  "  the  common  ownership  of 
all  the  means  of  production,  distribution,  and  ex- 
change." It  is  also  spoken  of  as  "  nationalisation  " 
of  all  property. 

Under  such  a  system — one,  that  is,  excluding 
private  possession  and  recognising  only  common 
ownership — it  is  evident  that  the  reward  of  all  labour 
would  be  for  use  in  common,  and  that  it  would 
profit  the  individual  labourer  only  indirectly,  and 
by  advancing  the  community  of  which  he  was  a 
member.  All  work  of  head  or  hand  would  but 
contribute  to  the  common  good,  and  serve  to 
maintain  or  raise  the  general  standard  of  living. 
Competition  would  have  become  objectless. 

It  has  been  urged  that  it  is  not  within  the 
power  of  Reason  to  bring  about  such  a  change 
in  our  environment.  It  is  pointed  out  that, 
according  to  a  condition  that  has  been  in  force 
from  the  beginning  of  life  onwards,  life  itself  has 
been  held  only  as  the  reward  of  success  in  com- 
petition ;  that  there  are  but  few  exceptions  to  this 


44  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

condition  in  the  tenure  of  life,  and  that  we  owe 
all  advance  to  its  operation.  Furthermore,  the 
system  of  individual  ownership  of  property,  whether 
instinctive  or  rational,  is  antecedent  to  any  form 
of  human  organisation.  Thus,  in  Iceland,  the 
many  small  lakes  surrounding  the  large  sheet  of 
water  known  as  Arnevatn  are  each  occupied  by 
one  pair  of  swans  {Cygnus  7/msicus),  who  are 
always  ready  to  fight  ferociously  with  an  intruder 
from  one  of  the  other  lakes.  Arnevatn  itself  is 
mapped  out  by  invisible  boundaries  into  areas  that 
are  each  occupied  by  a  single  pair  of  swans,  and 
trespass  is  invariably  treated  as  a  casus  belli.  Such 
examples  of  individual  ownership  antedating  any 
form  of  human  organisation  might  easily  be  multi- 
plied. This  passion  for  individual  ownership  is  to 
be  ascribed  immediately  to  competitive  conditions 
of  life ;  so  immediate  is  the  connection  that  we  can 
scarcely  disentangle  the  two.  When  the  wild 
swans  fight,  we  should  call  it  an  example  of  com- 
petition for  life — or  for  the  means  of  life.  Prob- 
ably the  swans  would  call  it  a  defence  of  the  rights 
of  property.  Which  would  be  correct?  Both, 
for  the  two  things  go  together.  Under  these 
circumstances  it  is  urged  that  the  impulse  to  com- 
petition and  the  tendency  to  individual  ownership 
are  among  the  most  ancient  and  primitive  instincts  ; 
that  they  are  so  far  innate  and  ingrained  that  any 
form  of  human  society,  if  it  is  to  be  successful,  can 
be  but  the  expression  of  them  and  secondary  to 
them;  and  that  all  human  social  systems  must 
ultimately  stand  or  fall  according  to  the  measure 
of  their  harmony  with  these,  their  antecedents. 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        45 

That  there  is  great  practical  weight  in  this 
objection  is  not  to  be  denied.  But  we  must  point 
out  that  the  present  pages  are  not  devoted  to  the 
consideration  of  what  is  practical,  but  to  the  dis- 
covery of  tendencies — to  the  discovery  of  the  under- 
lying forces  that  go  to  the  formation  of  the  practical 
resultant  that  we  see,  and  to  the  recognition  of 
their  character  as  making  for  growth  or  decay. 

Thus  considered,  we  find  that  the  above  argu- 
ment ignores  the  progressively  increasing  ascend- 
ancy of  Reason,  and  its  advancing  efficiency  in 
the  prevention  of  waste  of  effort.  In  competition 
and  private  ownership  we  still  retain  much  of  the 
wastefulness  of  the  primitive  method  of  the  in- 
stinctive world.  Why  are  we  to  expect  that  so 
wasteful  a  method  should  be  exempt  from  the 
inferential  power  of  Reason  ?  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  we  are  travelling  along  a  road,  and  not 
standing  still.  Such  an  appeal  to  Instinct  is  an 
appeal  to  the  slave  against  his  master,  and,  when 
the  prepotent  factor  is  no  longer  Instinct,  but 
Reason,  then  all  human  social  systems  must  ulti- 
mately come  into  being  according  to  their  success 
in  the  avoidance  of  waste,  and  the  saving  of  internal 
friction  that  they  achieve.  If  the  impulse  to 
competition  and  the  tendency  to  individual  owner- 
ship cannot  justify  themselves  rationally,  they 
cannot  withstand  this  movement.  Their  wasteful- 
ness of  effort  precludes  them  from  doing  so. 

When  we  look  at  the  position  still  more  closely 
we  realise  that  common  ownership  would  not  only 
bring  the  competition  between  the  Individual  and 
Society  to  an  end,  but  that  the  interest  of  the 


46  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Individual  would  be  actually  merged  in  and  identi- 
fied with  that  of  Society.  For  if  all  things  were 
owned  in  common,  it  is  evident  that  a  general 
equality  would  result,  and  continue  so  long  as  the 
system  lasted.  Under  these  circumstances  a  man 
could  only  find  his  private  advantage  in  the  im- 
provement of  the  common  good,  and  by  sharing  in 
the  general  rise  in  the  standard  of  living  that  he 
has  helped  to  bring  about.  And  it  would  equally 
be  to  the  interest  of  all  other  members  of  such 
a  Society  to  seek  their  own  purely  selfish  ends  in 
the  same  manner — by  seeking,  that  is,  to  raise  the 
general  standard  of  living  in  order  that  they  might 
share  therein.  Thus  the  interests  of  the  separate 
members  of  a  non-competitive  social  machine  could 
not  rationally  be  diverse  from  one  another :  the 
amount  of  the  friction  of  life  would  be  reduced  to 
an  inevitable  minimum.  In  proportion  as  the 
system  were  non-competitive  so  would  be  its 
efficiency  in  saving  the  waste  of  effort. 

But  we  have  seen  that  through  ages  of  evolu- 
tion it  has  been  the  office  of  Reason  to  prevent 
such  waste  :  that  it  is  in  virtue  of  the  energy  thus 
set  free  that  the  rational  world  has  secured  its  pre- 
eminence. Here,  then,  in  the  absolute  identifi- 
cation of  the  interest  of  the  Individual  with  that 
of  Society,  we  recognise  the  maximum  develop- 
ment and  the  highest  expression  of  Reason. 

The  conclusion  reached  is,  then,  that  pure 
Reason  not  only  seeks  the  cessation  of  the  stress 
involved  in  competition,  but  that  it — the  predomi- 
nant partner  in  the  association  with  Instinct — is 
competent  to  secure  this  end  by  the  substitution 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   SOCIETY        47 

of  common  ownership  for  the  existing  system  of 
private  property.  Furthermore,  we  conclude  that 
this  change  would  not  only  terminate  the  conflict 
between  the  Individual  and  Society,  but  would 
secure  the  absolute  identification  of  their  interests 
by  a  "  social  contract "  that  is  as  naturally  and 
inevitably  the  outcome  of  the  working  of  pure 
Reason  as  an  instinctive  action  is  the  outcome 
of  inborn  impulse. 


CHAPTER  V 

REASON  IN  RELATION  TO  REPRODUCTION:  THE 
INTEREST  OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  RELATION 
TO   THE   RACE. 

When  the  reader  recalls  what  has  already  been 
put  forward  in  these  pages,  he  will  readily  see  that 
racial  advantage  does  not  now  concern  us,  because 
at  present  we  are  limited  to  the  consideration  of 
the  matter  strictly  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
purely  rational  individual.  Purely  rational  con- 
duct will  be  dictated  solely  by  the  prepotent 
interest  of  the  Individual,  and  any  result  that  may 
accrue  to  the  Race  will  be  merely  incidental. 

Thus,  in  the  matter  of  reproduction,  we  can 
neither  hark  back  to  the  Instincts  that  concern 
themselves  about  the  Race,  nor  go  forward  to  the 
consideration  of  any  course  of  action  founded  upon 
a  disinterested  basis,  and  involving  the  subjection 
of  the  Individual  to  the  interest  of  the  Race.  To 
do  so  would  create  a  confusion  of  thought.  It 
would  be  either  infra-rational,  that  is,  instinctive ; 
or  else  it  would  be  supra-rational. 

In  either  case  it  would  be  extraneous  at  the 
present  stage  of  our  inquiry. 

Therefore,  just  as  when  we  were  dealing  with 
Reason  in  relation  to  the  competitive  or  social 
stress,  we  asked,  firstly:   "Is  it  to  the  interest 

48 


INDIVIDUAL   AND   RACE  49 

of  the  Individual  to  abolish  competition  ? "  and 
secondly :  '*  Is  it  in  his  power  to  do  so  ?  "  So  now 
we  ask,  firstly :  "  Is  it  to  the  interest  of  the 
Individual  to  decline  the  provision  of  future  gene- 
rations ? "  and  secondly :  "Is  it  in  his  power  to 
do  so?" 

Before  we  can  answer  the  first  of  these  ques- 
tions we  must  deal  with  the  possible  objection  that 
the  question  itself  is  unfair.  It  may  be  urged  that 
the  desire  for  offspring  is  so  primitive  and  innate 
an  instinct  that  it  ought  not  to  be  excluded  from 
consideration,  that  rational  conduct  is  controlled 
by  it,  and  that  the  Race  will  always  be  continued 
under  its  influence.  This  reliance  on  Instinct  is, 
however,  a  racial  parallel  to  the  social  dependence 
on  it  that  was  examined  on  page  45.  Then  we 
discussed  the  contention  that  a  socialist  form  of 
Society  was  impossible  because  the  tendency  to 
individual  ownership  was  so  primitive  and  powerful 
an  instinct  that  it  would  prevail  even  though  irra- 
tional. Now  we  are  discussing  the  contention  that 
the  desire  for  offspring  is  so  powerful  and  primitive 
an  instinct  that  it  can  defy  the  power  of  Reason. 

In  each  case  the  answer  is  the  same.  Instinct 
subjects  the  Individual  to  a  system  of  social  com- 
petition and  racial  servitude.  Reason  frees  him 
from  both.  Instinct  and  Reason  pull  in  opposite 
directions,  and  their  spontaneous  co-operation  is 
impossible.  And  Instinct  wanes  while  Reason 
waxes.  Ever  more  and  more  Instinct  is  held  in 
the  leash  of  Reason,  and,  in  any  rational  society,  a 
time  inevitably  comes  when  the  relative  increase 
in  the  power  of  Reason  leads  to  the  synchronous 


50  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

appearance  of  socialistic  phenomena  and  a  failure 
of  the  birthrate ;  a  simultaneous  yielding  to  the 
social  stress  and  the  racial  stress  to  which  reference 
will  be  made  later  on  (page  61). 

The  Race  may  be  regarded  as  an  organism 
possessed,  practically,  of  an  indefinitely  prolonged 
existence.  The  Individual,  on  the  contrary,  has 
but  a  brief  span  of  life.  The  duration  of  his  life, 
as  compared  with  that  of  the  existence  of  the 
Race,  is  almost  negligible.  The  Race  has  been 
said  to  live  in  an  "ever-moving  present."  The 
Individual  lives  in  the  presence  of  an  ever-approach- 
ing Death.  Death  is  the  factor  that  draws  the 
distinction  between  the  two. 

We  are  dealing  with  interests.  How  does  this 
factor  affect  their  respective  interests?  It  is  evi- 
dent that  if  the  Individual  lived,  or  rather,  expected 
to  live,  as  long  as  the  Race  (and  no  increase  in 
numbers  took  place),  then,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Individual  and  Society,  their  interests  would  march 
together,  would  be  identical,  and  pure  Reason  a 
sufficient  guide.  In  the  absence  of  this  factor, 
their  interests  need  not,  of  any  antecedent  neces- 
sity, be  the  same. 

"  Cuncta  manus  avidas  fugient  haeredis  amice 
Quae  dederis  animo." 

— HoR.,  Odes,  iv.  7. 

**  All  spent  on  your  dear  self  will  escape  the  greedy  hands 
of  your  heir." 

When  a  great  estate  is  entailed,  each  successive 
"owner,"  although  entitled  to  deal  with  the  in- 
come,  is  under   constraint  to   leave    the    capital 


INDIVIDUAL  AND  RACE  51 

undiminished  and  untouched.  It  is  evident  that 
the  constraint  is  the  essence  of  this  arrangement. 
Let  us  look  at  such  a  case  solely  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  "  owner's  "  rational  interests.  Cut 
away  from  below  him  the  purpose  of  the  prompt- 
ings of  Instinct,  erase  from  above  him  every  dis- 
interested motive,  and  what  is  his  advantage  in  the 
continuance  of  the  entail  ?  What  are  the  coming 
generations  of  the  family  to  such  a  one  ?  What, 
to  him,  is  a  future  in  which  he  has  no  part  and  no 
lot?  It  is  postulated  that  he  is  moved  only  by 
individual  interest.  If  he  has  the  power  to  spend 
the  capital  upon  himself;  if  the  deterring  con- 
straint is  removed;  why  should  he  resist  the 
temptation  to  do  so  ?  The  conclusion  is  inevitable. 
He  would  spend  the  capital  within  his  own  lifetime. 
And  if  he  goes  childless  through  life,  nature  inflicts 
no  penalty  either  upon  him  or  upon  any  other  in- 
dividual. But  the  Race  is  injured  :  the  penalty  of 
nature  falls  in  the  disappearance  of  the  family. 

When  we  turn  to  the  facts  of  hfe  we  find  that 
the  parallel  is  exact.  Let  us  assume — the  assump- 
tion will  not  be  very  far  wrong — that  that  part  of 
the  stress  of  life  which  is  represented  by  the  efforts 
of  the  Individual  to  maintain  himself  in  competi- 
tion with  his  contemporaries  is  equivalent  to  the 
part  represented  by  the  efforts  necessary  in  the 
nurture,  care,  and  education  of  the  young,  who 
belong  to  the  coming  generation.  On  this  assump- 
tion, those — married  or  unmarried — who  elect  to 
go  childless  through  life  are  relieved  of  one-half  of 
the  stress  and  anxiety  that  is  the  lot  of  those  who 
have  elected  to  be  the  parents  of  the  generations 


52  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

to  come.  Whether  our  assumption  of  one-half  as 
the  measure  of  the  relief  is  correct  or  not,  is 
unimportant.  The  relief,  the  advantage  in  the 
competitive  stress,  is  in  any  case  enormous.  The 
energy  thus  set  free  lays  open  the  whole  vista  of 
life  to  such  a  one.  Leisure,  travel,  adventure,  all 
that  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  can  offer,  are  his ; 
and  to  marry,  which  is  the  great  racial  act  of  a 
man's  lifetime,  is  the  maddest  and  most  irrational 
act  that  it  is  possible  to  conceive. 

Thus,  rationally,  each  sex  is  apt  to  regard  the 
other  as  the  cause  of  its  own  undoing;  and  we 
witness  such  a  portent  as  the  sex-antagonism  that 
is  now  springing  up. 

Building  up  the  future  rests  upon  burdened 
shoulders ;  and  those  who  are  burdened  are  easily 
passed  in  the  race.  Thus,  under  a  competitive 
system,  it  is  clearly  to  the  interest  of  the  Individual 
to  break  the  entail,  and  to  spend  upon  himself  all 
the  riches  of  life.  The  hostility  between  the  in- 
terests of  the  Individual  and  the  Race  that  would 
exist  among  animals,  were  it  not  masked  by 
Instinct,  appears  upon  the  scene  uncovered  in 
rational  Society.  Reason,  pei^  se,  has  no  racial 
quality,  it  is  not  concerned  to  avert  this  hostility, 
and  the  distinction  that  Death  draws  between  the 
Individual  and  the  Race  places  their  interests 
directly  in  opposition  to  one  another. 

If,  then,  it  is  to  the  interest  of  the  life  tenant 
to  break  the  entail,  the  second  of  our  two  questions 
arises,  and  we  must  ask  :  *'  Is  it  in  his  power  to  do 
so?"  Under  Instinct  the  constraint  that  ensures 
the  continuance  of  the  entail  of  life  is  absolute. 


INDIVIDUAL  AND   RACE  53 

Does  Reason  not  only  lay  bare  the  antagonism  of 
interests,  but  also  confer  upon  the  Individual  the 
power  to  act  in  his  sole  interest ;  the  power,  that 
is,  to  break  the  entail  of  life  ? 

That  it  confers  this  power  is  incontestable.  It 
is  futile  to  say  that  Instinct,  in  this  matter,  still 
governs  conduct,  and  that  it  shows  little  or  no  sign 
of  weakening.  The  statement  is  quite  true ;  but, 
strong  as  Instinct  is,  it  has  fallen  into  the  toils  of 
Reason,  and  is  fooled  of  its  purpose.  There  is  no 
need  to  quote  the  figures  issued  by  the  British 
Registrar- General.  In  greater  or  less  degree  the 
fact  is  in  evidence  throughout  every  community  of 
the  white  man.  Moreover,  in  view  of  what  has 
been  pointed  out  above,  it  is  interesting  to  observe 
that  the  birthrate  falls,  not  only  in  direct  ratio  with 
the  predominance  of  the  rational  faculty  in  any 
community,  but  also  in  a  direct  ratio  with  its  com- 
parative predominance  in  various  classes  of  the 
same  community.  The  spirit  of  the  French  mind 
is  generally  admitted  to  be  the  most  logical  and 
rational  in  Europe:  France  has  the  lowest  birth- 
rate. In  America  it  has  been  noticed  that  the 
"Higher"  education  of  women  has  had  a  striking 
effect  in  leading  to  avoidance  of  office — that  is  to 
say,  in  either  preventing  marriages,  or  in  produc- 
ing childless  unions.  Among  ourselves  the  position 
is  shown  by  the  evidence  given  before  the  Royal 
Commission  on  Divorce,  by  Sir  James  Crichton- 
Browne,  on  31st  October  1910,  when  he  said : 
"  Since  1875  the  average  number  of  children  pro- 
duced by  a  fertile  union  has  halved  in  the  best 
families  of  all  classes  in  this  country." 


"     54  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

The  conclusion  reached  is,  then,  that  pure 
Reason,  careless  of  the  Race,  seeks  the  cessation 
of  the  self-sacrifice  involved  in  parenthood.  So 
far  as  the  reproductive  stress  is  concerned,  the 
interests  of  the  Individual  and  of  the  Race  cannot 
be  identified  in  pure  Reason.  In  pure  Reason  the 
Individual  is  greater  than  the  Race,  and  his  interest 
prevails. 


CHAPTER  VI 

RELATIVE   INTEREST  OF  SOCIETY  AND  THE  RACE 
UNDER   THE   METHOD   OF  REASON 

In  the  two  preceding  chapters  we  have  considered 
the  rational  relations  of  the  Individual  and  Society 
in  the  first,  and  of  the  Individual  and  the  Race 
in  the  second.  In  the  former  we  have  seen  that 
Reason  desires,  and  can  secure,  the  identification 
of  the  interest  of  the  Individual  with  that  of 
Society ;  in  the  latter  we  have  seen  that  Reason 
is  unsuccessful  in  a  similar  attempt  upon  the 
diverse  interests  of  the  Individual  and  the  Race. 
It  fails  even  to  reconcile  them,  because  Reason 
would  subordinate  the  interest  of  the  Race  to  that 
of  the  Individual.  So  we  may  summarise  the 
matter  by  saying  that,  in  the  first  case,  the  Indi- 
vidual is  equal  to  Society,  and  that,  in  the  second 
case,  the  Individual  is  greater  than  the  Race. 

Our  next  task  is  to  examine  the  relation  of  the 
interest  of  Society  with  that  of  the  Race,  in  order 
to  complete  the  consideration  of  the  triangle  of 
interests  that  we  have  represented  thus : 

Race 


Individual'  ^  Society 

55 


56  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Now,  if  the  interests  of  the  Individual  and 
Society  are  identical — if,  that  is,  under  a  com- 
munistic system.  Society  takes  the  place  of  the 
Individual — then  evidently  the  divergence  between 
the  interests  of  the  Individual  and  the  Race,  which 
we  noted,  would  appear,  at  first  sight,  also  to 
involve  a  similar  cleavage  between  the  interests 
of  Society  and  the  Race.  Whether  this  assump- 
tion will  stand  examination,  or  not,  is  the  subject 
of  the  present  stage  of  our  inquiry. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  failure  of 
Reason  to  reconcile  the  interests  of  the  Individual 
and  the  Race  concerned  the  matter  of  reproduc- 
tion. Applying  here  the  same  test,  the  question 
becomes :  "  Can  Reason  so  state  the  terms  of  their 
mutual  dependence  that  Society  will  find  its 
interest  in  the  encouragement  of  the  reproduc- 
tion and  nurture  of  the  Race  ? " 

It  is  unquestionable  that  the  older  school  of 
economists,  referred  to  in  Chap.  Ill,  were  right 
when  they  urged  that  the  strain  upon  the  Indi- 
vidual, caused  by  competition,  could  be  rendered 
more  tolerable  if  the  reproductive  activity  of  the 
Race  were  lessened.  It  is  equally  obvious  that 
the  newer  school  is  also  right  when,  recognising 
the  racial  evils  and  dangers  attendant  upon  a 
low  birthrate,  it  urges  alternatively  that,  the  com- 
petitive system  of  life  once  abolished,  the  provision 
of  future  generations  would  become  less  burden- 
some. For,  if  Society,  under  a  system  of  common 
ownership,  took  the  place  of  the  Individual,  and 
shouldered  the  reproductive  stress  that  is  now 
borne   by  him,  then   the   weight  of  the   burden 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   RACE  57 

might  be  lessened,  though  only  slightly,  by  uni- 
fication of  effort.  So  far  as  the  unification  were 
rational,  it  would  save  a  certain  amount  of  energy 
now  wasted :  just  as  the  care  of  a  hundred  patients 
is  more  easily  carried  on  in  one  hospital  than  in 
a  hundred  separate  homes. 

But  these  two  contentions,  however  true,  are 
equally  beside  the  point.  They  juggle  with  the 
items  in  the  face  of  bankruptcy.  They  are  ex- 
traneous to  the  present  argument,  because  they 
propose  merely  a  reduction  of  the  two  stresses. 
Imperious  Reason  knows  no  such  limitation,  but 
demands  their  total  abolition.  She,  moreover,  has 
the  power  to  secure  these  ends.  To  offer  less  is 
to  palter  with  pure  Reason.  And  pure  Reason 
does  not  lend  herself  to  equivocation.  You  can- 
not pick  and  choose.  She  demands,  not  that  the 
binding  rope  which  cuts  into  the  flesh  shall  be 
loosened,  but  that  it  shall  be  removed  altogether. 

There  is  nothing  here  to  show  that  it  is  less 
clearly  to  the  interest  of  Society  than  of  the  Indi- 
vidual to  check  the  work  of  reproduction.  Indeed, 
under  Socialism,  the  identification  of  the  interest 
of  the  Individual  with  that  of  Society  is  not  ap- 
proximate, but  absolute.  It  is  not  to  the  interest 
of  a  Socialistic  Society  to  permit  more  than  an 
irreducible  minimum  of  reproduction  on  the  part 
of  the  individuals  composing  it. 

For,  in  a  Socialistic  Society  in  running  order 
— a  Society  essentially  contrived  to  secure  material 
ease — is  it  to  be  imagined  that  the  sense  of  the 
stress  of  reproduction,  and  of  the  costliness  of  the 
nurture  of  children,  would  not  become  more  acute 


58  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

in  proportion  as  the  competitive  stress  is  relieved  ? 
We  have  already  pointed  out  that  marriage  would 
be  an  act  of  madness  in  a  rational  individual. 
Would  multiplication  be  less  than  insanity  on  the 
part  of  a  communist  society  ? 

Thus  no  system  of  common  ownership,  al- 
though it  may  remove  the  competitive  stress,  can 
remove  the  reproductive  stress :  it  is  not  designed 
to  that  end.  It  may,  perhaps,  do  something  to 
mitigate  the  severity  of  its  incidence,  but  it 
cannot,  except  by  the  avoidance  of  parenthood 
itself,  effect  the  removal  that  is  demanded  by 
Reason.  To  the  Individual  it  makes  no  material 
difference  whether  the  stress  falls  upon  him  in 
the  character  of  a  father  of  a  family,  or  in  the 
character  of  a  citizen  of  a  Socialistic  Society. 

The  purely  rational  demand  would  be  that  this 
stress  should  be  removed,  even  as  the  competitive 
stress  had  been  removed.  We  have  seen  already, 
that  the  Individual  can  only  escape  from  this  stress 
by  the  avoidance  of  parenthood  itself.  We  see 
now,  that  a  Socialistic  Society  fares  no  better. 
The  logical  position  of  Society,  vis-a-vis  to  the 
Race,  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  Individual. 
The  identity  of  their  interests  goes  to  the  bitter 
end. 

Moreover,  if  we  regard  a  Socialistic,  that  is  a 
non-competitive  form  of  Society,  as  the  most 
rational  form,  then  it  becomes  evident,  a  fortiori^ 
that  it  is  an  antecedent  impossibiUty  for  any  other 
form  of  rational  Society,  however  constituted,  or 
however  reconstructed,  to  bridge  the  logical  hiatus 
between  its  interest  and  that  of  the  Race.    Indeed, 


SOCIETY  AND   THE   RACE  59 

the  more  logically  and  rationally  it  is  constructed, 
the  more  intrusive  becomes  the  fact  that  the 
hostility  between  the  interests  of  the  Individual 
and  the  Race  persists  also  into  the  relations 
between  Society  and  the  Race. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CONDEMNATION  OF  THE  METHOD 
OF  REASON 

It  is  deeply  interesting  to  note  the  manner  in 
which  the  rational  revolt  against  these  two  stresses, 
the  social  and  the  racial,  occurs  in  the  course  of 
the  growth  of  any  modern  civilisation.  Practically 
always,  the  revolt  shows  itself  at  a  certain  stage 
of  development,  and  the  revolt  against  the  one 
takes  place  nearly  at  the  same  time  as  the  revolt 
against  the  other.  We  need  not  look  far  afield 
for  an  illustration  of  this  coincidence.  In  English 
life  the  two  outstanding  features  of  the  last  quarter 
of  a  century  are,  the  appearance  of  a  Socialistic 
party,  and  a  rapidly  falling  birthrate.  Among 
ourselves,  the  tendency  to  a  decline  in  the  birth- 
rate slightly  preceded  the  Socialistic  phenomena. 
In  Germany,  this  order  appears  to  have  been 
reversed.  German  Socialism  has,  for  some  time 
past,  been  a  powerful  element  in  the  composition 
of  that  empire,  and  yet  there  has  been  a  great 
increase  in  the  population.  This,  however,  is  at 
present  mainly  due  to  improved  sanitary  conditions, 
and  the  consequent  preservation  of  the  elderly. 
Already  the  German  birthrate  is  falling  rapidly. 
The  "corrected"  birthrate  of  Berlin  in  1881  was 
32-2,  and  in  1901  it  was  26-8.' 

1  The  Declining  Birthrate,  page  26,  by  Arthur  Newsholme,  M.D.,  Prin- 
cipal Officer  of  the  Local  Government  Board.    Cassell  &  Co.  Ltd.,  1911. 


CONDEMNATION   OF   REASON      61 

The  nature  of  French  genius  ensured  the 
appearance  of  the  twin  phenomena  in  France 
before  they  invaded  England  or  Germany,  but 
their  advent  coincided  in  point  of  time. 

The  cause  of  this  simultaneity  does  not  lie  quite 
upon  the  surface ;  indeed,  a  tendency  to  demand 
common  ownership  and  a  tendency  to  limit  re- 
production appear,  at  first  sight,  to  be  dissimilar 
in  character,  and  their  coincidence  to  be  fortuitous. 
Nevertheless,  the  cause  of  their  conjunction  will 
be  sufficiently  obvious  to  the  reader  of  the  pre- 
ceding pages.  Their  common  origin  is  to  be 
found  in  the  increasing  preponderance  of  Reason, 
and  the  consequently  increasing  pursuit  of  self- 
interest.  When  that  has  reached  a  given  point 
the  effect  becomes  observable,  both  socially  and 
racially. 

We  have  seen  that,  even  if  the  social  stress  had 
received  its  maximum  of  relief  under  a  Socialistic 
organisation — the  highest  expression  of  Reason, 
in  dealing  with  competition — still,  the  racial  stress 
would  be  untouched,  except  by  the  rational  destruc- 
tion of  the  interest  of  the  Race.  It  is  therefore 
necessary,  in  the  consideration  of  these  twin  pheno- 
mena, to  devote  ourselves  to  the  examination  of 
the  one  that  is  concerned  with  racial  destruction 
at  the  bidding  of  Reason. 

The  power  to  control  the  birthrate — the  power, 
that  is,  to  break  the  entail  of  life — is  wholly  absent 
under  the  dispensation  of  Instinct ;  it  is  conferred 
by  Reason  alone,  and  therefore  may  be  considered, 
from  an  evolutionary  point  of  view,  as  a  novel 
racial  environment.     Thus,  the  effects  of  this,  not 


62  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

only  the  newest  factor  in  evolution,  but  one  of  the 
first  magnitude,  are  to  be  traced,  not  in  the  recesses 
of  a  tropical  forest,  but  upon  the  highways  of 
civilisation. 

We  have  seen  that  Instinct,  supervening  over 
reflex  power,  was  unable  to  do  more,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  casarita,  than  follow  the  inborn  impulse, 
whether  it  were  self-destructive  or  not,  under  the 
circumstances  of  each  individual  case.  Instinct, 
that  is,  was  unable  to  dominate  the  environment 
that  it  had  itself  created  when  it  supervened  over 
merely  reflex  power.  Instinct  arose  and  survived, 
on  account  of  its  ability  to  deal  advantageously 
with  the  conditions  that  had  preceded  it;  that  is 
to  say,  with  quite  another  environment  than  that 
which  it  made  for  itself.  In  the  result,  it  created 
an  environment  of  limitless  wastefulness — a  waste- 
fulness with  which,  for  lack  of  the  power  of 
drawing  inferences,  it  was  itself  unable  to  deal. 

Even  so  it  is  with  Reason  in  the  matter  of  the 
birthrate.  Reason  arose  and  survived,  on  account 
of  its  power  to  deal  advantageously  with  the  waste- 
fulness of  the  environment  created  by  Instinct. 
But  it  is  unable  to  dominate  the  new  environment 
created  by  itself,  or  to  remain  within  the  boundaries 
of  its  usefulness.  Thus,  for  example,  to  break  the 
entail  of  life  is  the  strict  and  inevitable  work  of 
pure  Reason,  for  a  rational  society  cannot  stultify 
itself  by  refusing  to  make  use  of  its  power  in 
a  manner  that  has  already  been  shown  to  be 
materially  to  the  interest  of  all  the  living. 

From  an  evolutionary  point  of  view,  it  is  im- 
possible to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  this  new 


CONDEMNATION   OF  REASON      63 

racial  environment.  Its  deadly  character  "leaps 
to  the  eye."  The  wastefulness  of  Instinct,  unable 
to  control  the  impulses  that  it  created,  finds  its 
parallel  in  the  wastefulness  of  Reason,  obliged  as 
it  is  to  follow  up  in  practice  the  inferences  that  it 
draws.  In  the  former  case,  the  individual  lives 
are  destroyed;  in  the  latter,  empire  after  empire 
and  civilisation  after  civilisation  are  struck  down. 
Reason  magnifies  its  office,  and,  by  the  toll  that  it 
takes  from  the  Race,  becomes  the  instrument  of 
ruin.  Its  pursuit  of  interest,  so  far  as  any  power 
inherent  in  itself  is  concerned,  is  as  uncontrolla;ble 
as  the  impulses  of  pure  Instinct ;  as  fixed  as  the 
reflex  response  to  a  stimulus. 

Even  though  we  turn  to  the  highest  and  most 
complete  expression  of  interest — a  communist  form 
of  society — still  we  find  no  logical  foundation  for 
permanence.  We  find,  on  the  contrary,  that  a 
Socialistic  Society  is  also  automatically  self-limit- 
ing, and  lies  open  to  the  impact  of  the  racial  stress. 
We  may,  indeed,  go  further,  and  find,  as  a  general- 
isation, that  any  civilisation  must  prove  ephemeral 
in  direct  ratio  to  its  dependence  upon  Reason. 
Where  there  is  no  place  for  disinterested  conduct, 
there  is  no  place  for  the  child. 

Lest  such  a  conclusion  should  appear,  even 
now,  to  be  preposterous  and  unheard  of,  it  may  be 
well  to  illustrate  our  meaning  by  turning,  for  a 
moment,  to  facts  that  are  within  the  cognisance  of 
everyone,  and  we  do  this  even  though  the  time  has 
not  yet  come  for  the  discussion  of  the  historical 
aspect  of  the  subject. 

In  contemporary  France,  we  may  see  the  pro- 


64  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

cess  in  operation.  But  a  very  few  generations 
have  passed  since  the  French  held  the  hegemony 
of  the  world.  At  present,  French  Society,  if  not 
indeed  Socialistic,  is  yet  the  Society  from  which 
non-rational  considerations  are  more  severely  ex- 
cluded than  from  any  other.  And  the  Frenchman 
is  bound  to  the  wheel  of  his  own  logical  faculty. 
The  most  rational  of  beings,  he  perceives,  indeed, 
the  import  of  what  is  going  on.  Still,  he  is  help- 
less, as  though  mesmerised,  and  wholly  unable  to 
suggest  any  rational  means  of  averting  the  famine 
of  children.  The  number  and  extent  of  his  writ- 
ings on  Depopulation  testify  that  none  can  recog- 
nise his  racial  danger  more  clearly  than  he  dqes, 
and  yet  he  cannot  draw  back  from  it.  On  the 
contrary,  Reason  is  compelling  French  Society 
to  advance  directly  to  the  racial  doom  that  its 
members  see  so  plainly  before  them — the  destruc- 
tion that  is  their  own  act  and  deed — the  destruction 
that,  none  the  less,  they  are  powerless  to  avoid. 

When  we  realise  these  facts,  and,  on  the  other 
side,  recall  that  the  pressure  of  population  is  an 
irresistible  force,  and  that,  in  the  long  run,  no 
ability,  no  strategy,  and  no  armament  can  save  the 
castle  with  an  insufficient  garrison,  then  we  see  that 
the  continuous  existence  of  any  civilisation  that 
is  founded  upon  interest  is  a  flat  impossibility. 

It  is  astonishing  to  read  such  a  work,  for 
instance,  as  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  Utilitarianism,  for  we 
find  therein  no  sign  of  the  idea  that  the  interests 
of  Society  and  of  the  Race  could  fail  to  be  iden- 
tical. He  does  not  point  to  them  as  separate 
conceptions,   and  there    is   no   evidence  that  he 


CONDEMNATION    OF   REASON      65 

recognised  the  difference  between  them.  Under 
these  circumstances,  it  is  a  matter  of  course  that 
he  makes  no  reference  to  the  possibility  of  any 
divergence  in  their  respective  interests.  That  this 
should  have  been  so  was  inevitable,  for  the  identity 
of  their  interests  is  a  postulate — an  understood 
premise — in  any  system  of  Utilitarianism. 

Moreover,  as  we  read  that  work,  we  feel  that 
there  was,  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  a  frozen 
certitude  that  any  form  of  religion  was  unneces- 
sary. The  question  of  its  truth  did  not  arise,  for, 
in  any  case,  it  was  antecedently  superfluous. 

Nevertheless,  that  which  was  regarded  as  im- 
material may  prove,  racially,  to  be  the  one  essen- 
tial. Had  the  great  utilitarians  of  the  last  century 
drawn  the  all-important  distinction  between  Society 
and  the  Race,  a  different  course  would  certainly 
have  been  taken  by  thought,  and  perhaps  by  history 
itself.  For,  that  which  it  reveals  is  nothing  less 
than  the  racial  insolvency  of  pure  Reason. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS  MOTIVE 

If,  then,  a  civilisation  resting  upon  a  utilitarian 
basis  is  of  necessity  an  impermanent,  or,  at  best, 
an  intermittent  phenomenon ;  if,  that  is,  the  method 
of  Reason  fails  racially,  and  so  leads  automatically 
to  the  disappearance  of  any  civilisation  that  is 
founded  upon  it,  we  have  next  to  ask :  "Is  every 
civilisation  foredoomed  to  failure  ?  Is  the  labour 
of  building  up  civilisation  always  to  prove  the 
Sisyphean  task  that  is  disclosed  in  the  history  of 
all  the  Western  civilisations  of  the  past  ? " 

Evidently  the  answer  to  this  question  in- 
volves a  further  consideration  of  what  we  have 
termed  "  Method."  We  have  seen  the  succession 
of  the  various  methods :  Reflex,  Instinctive,  and 
Rational ;  and  that,  although  each  is  an  advance 
upon  its  predecessor,  yet  each  has  proved  imperfect. 
Therefore  we  have  to  restate  our  question,  and  to 
ask :  "  Can  we  descry  the  possibility  of  some  method 
that,  in  its  turn,  might  supersede  the  method  of 
Reason;  a  method  disclosing  new  powers,  and 
motives  hitherto  unconsidered,  for  conduct  that 
will  be  of  racial  value  ? " 

For  a  method  to  be  entitled  to  take  precedence 
of  the  method  of  Reason,  it  must  come  with  great 
credentials. 


METHOD   OF  RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE     67 

In  the  first  place,  if  we  are  to  regard  it  as  the 
basis  of  a  permanent  civilisation,  it  must  itself  be 
permanent.  It  must  be  demonstrably  free  from 
the  underlying  cause  of  the  failure  that  has  been 
common  to  the  previous  methods,  lest  it  should 
itself  require  to  be  superseded  in  the  future,  or 
liable  to  fail  in  its  turn,  as  the  methods  of  Instinct 
and  Reason  have  failed.  Thus  it  must  be  one  in 
which  the  forces  making  for  growth  shall  perman- 
ently overbear  the  forces  making  for  decay.  It 
must,  that  is,  provide  a  basis  for  an  ever-growing 
civilisation,  a  civilisation  of  ever-increasing  value  to 
the  human  race.  It  must  be  capable  of  indefinite 
expansion,  and  able  to  prove  itself  the  terminus  of 
the  series  of  methods. 

We  can  only  see  whether  such  a  method  is 
possible  when  we  have  exposed  clearly  the  common 
and  underlying  cause  of  the  incompetence  that  is 
present  in  all  the  methods  that  have  preceded  it, 
and  not  merely,  as  hitherto,  the  special  manner  in 
which  this  common  cause  has  operated  in  each 
particular  case.  The  discovery  of  such  a  common 
factor  will  furnish  us  with  a  touchstone  whereby 
to  estimate  the  value  of  any  method  that  claims 
to  be  supra-rational,  and  either  to  accept  it  as 
genuine,  or  to  reject  it  as  spurious.  If  we  find  that 
the  persistence  of  this  factor  is  inevitable,  then  the 
cycle  of  decay  will  still  wait  upon  the  cycle  of 
growth,  and  we  shall  know  that  a  permanent 
civilisation  is  beyond  the  grasp  of  humanity. 

In  the  second  place,  it  must  be  free,  more  parti- 
cularly, from  the  form  of  this  underlying  disability 
that  we  have  found  to  be  special  to  Reason,  its 


68  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

immediate  predecessor.  This  disability  arises  from 
the  fact  that  rational  conduct  does  not  warrant  the 
individual  in  subordinating  his  interest  to  that  of 
the  Race.  Reason  is  incompetent  because  it  pro- 
vides no  place  for  disinterested  conduct. 

If,  then,  a  supra-rational  method  is  to  be 
competent  where  Reason  is  incompetent,  it  must 
provide,  not  for  any  enlightened  self-interest,  but 
for  the  voluntary  self-sacrifice  of  the  individual : 
a  provision  as  unknown  to  the  interest  of  rational 
conduct,  as  it  is  in  the  gratification  of  the  im- 
pulse of  pure  Instinct,  or  the  reflex  response  to 
a  stimulus. 

And  now  that  we  must  use  the  word  supra- 
ratio7ial,  let  us  guard  ourselves  at  once  by  pointing 
out  that  it  does  not  carry  with  it  any  implication 
that  Reason  is  discarded  or  even  depreciated,  nor 
that  the  supra-rational  is  either  irrational  or  non- 
rational.  We  mean,  superimposed  over  Reason, 
without  the  loss  of  anything  serviceable  in  Reason, 
as  Reason  superseded  Instinct  without  the  loss  of 
anything  serviceable  in  Instinct,  and  as  Instinct 
has  not  involved  the  loss  of  the  reflexes.  Civilisa- 
tion cannot  live  by  Reason  alone;  if  it  is  to  be 
stable  at  all,  it  can  only  be  based  upon  the  supra- 
rational. 

Taking  up  now  the  consideration  of  the  first 
of  the  two  requirements,  we  ask  :  "  What  common 
cause  of  incompetence,  what  common  element  of 
incompleteness,  is  revealed  in  the  failure  of  the 
methods  of  Reflex  Action,  Instinct,  and  Reason  ?  " 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  quite  accurate  to 
speak  of  them  as  failures,  for  each  has  been  sue- 


METHOD   OF  RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE     69 

cessful  in  the  limited  area  in  which  it  was  fitted  to 
act.  It  will  be  remembered  that  we  have  already- 
pointed  out  that  these  successive  steps  bear  a 
curiously  close  resemblance  to  the  steps  of  human 
scientific  advance ;  and  we  may  now  be  permitted 
to  carry  the  same  analogy  in  another  direction.  A 
scientific  discovery  may  successfully  throw  light 
upon  that  which  previously  had  baffled  our  compre- 
hension. But  the  light  has  scarcely  shone  upon 
the  old  problem  before  we  realise  that  the  new 
discovery  has  itself  raised  a  series  of  new  problems, 
apparently  more  insoluble  than  the  old  one.  Thus, 
as  the  circle  of  human  knowledge  is  widened,  the 
existence  of  a  more  and  more  extensive  area  of  the 
unknown  and  mysterious  is  revealed  beyond  its 
circumference. 

So  it  is  with  the  methods  or  steps  in  the  ad- 
vance of  civilisation.  Each  method  has  survived, 
because  it  was  successful  in  solving  the  special 
problems  that  had  been  propounded  by  its  pre- 
decessor. Each  method  has  succeeded  in  doing 
so,  by  widening  the  environment  of  life,  and  bring- 
ing new  powers  into  its  service.  But,  with  each 
extension  of  the  horizon,  new  difficulties  have 
sprung  up — difficulties  that  the  new  method,  de- 
signed to  relieve  those  of  its  predecessor,  is  itself 
unable  to  overcome.  Thus,  on  each  occasion  the 
environment  created  has  proved  greater  than  the 
method  was  fitted  to  deal  with,  and  an  incomplete- 
ness— a  failure  relative  to  the  new  environment — 
has  resulted.  We  see  that  the  power  of  response 
to  an  external  stimulus  creates,  but  leaves  unsatis- 
fied, the  need  of  a  power  to  act  independently  of 


70  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

the  stimulus.  The  environment  created  by  reflex 
power  is  obviously  limited.  The  useful  inborn 
impulses  of  Instinct  arise  and  fill  the  gap.  With 
the  appearance  of  the  method  of  Instinct  the  scene 
widens,  but  we  have  learned  that  the  environment 
created  by  this  method  is,  even  in  the  impulses 
that  are  of  racial  value,  limited  to  the  gratification 
of  the  inborn  impulses  of  the  Individual.  The 
environment  created  by  inborn  impulse  is,  then, 
that  of  the  Individual.  In  its  turn,  the  possession 
of  inborn  impulse  has  created,  but  left  unsatisfied, 
the  need  of  the  power  of  drawing  inferences.  Now, 
in  its  turn.  Reason  fills  the  gap.  When  we  reach 
the  region  of  Reason,  we  are  upon  a  higher 
eminence,  and  the  scene  is  wider  still.  But,  when 
our  survey  of  the  environment  created  by  Reason 
is  carried  to  its  utmost  limits,  we  find  that  it  cannot 
reach  beyond  the  interest  of  Society.  The  environ- 
ment of  interest  is  that  of  Society.  In  its  turn. 
Reason  has  created,  but  left  unsatisfied,  the  need 
of  a  basis  of  action  of  racial  value ;  of  action  that, 
so  far  as  the  Individual  is  concerned,  is  purely 
disinterested.  Thus,  the  common  cause  of  in- 
adequacy has  been  exposed  on  each  occasion  by  a 
widening  of  the  visible  horizon,  and  the  relation 
of  Reason  to  its  own  environment  has  furnished 
no  exception  to  this  rule.  The  repetition  of 
inadequacy  can  only  be  eliminated  in  any  supra- 
rational  method  if  it  provides  us  with  an  environ- 
ment that  does  not  admit  of  further  extension. 

Now,  the  broad  fact  that  we  observe,  when  we 
contemplate  the  general  character  of  these  several 
environments,  is  that  they  are  limited  to  the  earth 


METHOD   OF  RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE     71 

and  to  earthly  conditions.  If  we  may  use  the 
word,  these  methods  are  geocentric. 

Thus,  a  supra-rational  method,  if  it  is  not  to 
admit  of  further  extension,  must  be  cosmocentric : 
it  must  bring  us  into  relation  with  the  universe — 
the  infinite. 

If  it  does  so,  it  will  be  demonstrably  free  from 
the  common  cause  of  inadequacy  in  its  predecessors. 
Taking  cognisance  of  the  infinite,  its  environment 
would  not  admit  of  further  extension.  Neverthe- 
less, within  its  boundary  would  be  the  possibility 
and  promise  of  indefinite  growth.  Permanent,  and 
of  necessity  the  terminus  of  the  series  of  methods, 
it  would  fulfil  the  first  of  our  two  requirements. 

Next,  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite,  do  we  find 
that  the  second  of  our  two  requirements,  the 
power  to  make  good  the  special  disability  of 
Reason,  would  be  fulfilled  ? 

Reason,  taking  all  the  earth  for  its  province, 
nevertheless  does  but  reveal  the  blank  that  separ- 
ates the  interest  of  the  Race  from  that  of  Society, 
and  the  need  of  the  self-sacrifice  that  alone  can  fill 
it.  It  recognises  no  guiding  principle,  save  interest. 
It  knows,  like  the  Jews  of  old,  "no  king  but 
Caesar." 

But  when  we  are  in  the  presence  of  the  infi- 
nite, evidently  a  new  position  has  to  be  taken  up. 
Evidently  a  new  rule  of  conduct  has  to  be  adopted, 
of  conduct  that  is  suitable  to  the  new  environment, 
as  interested  conduct  is  suitable  to  the  environment 
of  Reason.  If  it  is  to  be  adapted  to  an  environ- 
ment that  is  not  earthly,  it  cannot  be  governed  by 
earthly  considerations. 


72  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

On  the  contrary,  in  a  life  that  is  spent  in  con- 
scious relation  to  the  infinite,  temporal  interest 
fades  into  nothingness,  and  the  significance  of 
life  is  to  be  found  only  in  its  relation  to  the 
infinite. 

And  the  meaning  of  the  life  that  is  significant 
in  the  presence  of  the  infinite  is  expressed  in  service. 
And  the  life  of  significant  service  is  a  life  of  reasoned 
self-sacrifice. 

Thus,  a  supra-rational  method,  bringing  with  it 
the  power  of  self-sacrifice,  shows  itself  to  be  free 
from  the  limitations  that  made  Reason  incompetent, 
and  fulfils  the  second  of  our  two  requirements. 

If,  for  the  purpose  of  these  pages,  we  may 
define  religion  as  conscious  relation  to  the  infinite, 
and  recognise  in  service  the  expression  of  that 
conscious  relation,  w^hat  else  is  this  service  than  a 
method  of  religious  motive?  Henceforward  we 
shall  speak,  not  of  a  supra-rational  method,  but  of 
a  method  of  Religious  Motive. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  general  stress 
of  life  consists  of  two  constant  elements :  the  social, 
or  competitive  stress,  and  the  racial,  or  reproductive 
stress.  We  have  already  examined  their  incidence  ; 
first,  under  inborn  impulse,  the  method  of  Instinct ; 
and  then  under  interest,  the  method  of  Reason. 
We  have  tried  these  methods,  and  found  them 
wanting  in  the  power  to  deal  adequately  with  one 
or  the  other  stress.  Under  the  method  of  Instinct 
we  found  inability  to  deal  with  the  competitive  or 
social  stress,  for  it  involved  a  limitless  waste  of 
individual  lives.  Under  the  method  of  Reason  we 
found  inability  to   deal  with  the  reproductive  or 


METHOD   OF  RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE     73 

racial  stress,  on  account  of  the  necessary  disappear- 
ance of  any  civilisation  based  upon  interest. 

And  now,  if  we  would  test  the  value  of 
Religion  as  the  basis  of  civilisation,  we  must  pass 
on  to  the  examination  of  the  reception  of  these 
two  stresses  under  the  method  of  Religious  Motive. 
There  we  shall  find  ourselves  in  a  new  world  of 
thought,  and  under  a  wider  sky,  where  the  appear- 
ance of  considerations  that  are  of  infinite  signifi- 
cance leads  to  the  surrender  of  those  that  are 
temporal ;  where  the  deliberate  and  frank  self- 
sacrifice  of  the  Individual  is  available,  and  duty 
takes  the  place  of  interest. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE  RELATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS 
MOTIVE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  STRESS :  THE  DUTY  OF 
THE  INDIVIDUAL  WITH  REGARD  TO  SOCIETY 

"  But  one  conclusion  he  (the  Scientific  Historical  Inquirer) 
may  properly  draw  from  the  facts  bearing  upon  the  subject 
before  us.  Nobody  is  at  liberty  to  attack  several  property  and 
to  say  at  the  same  time  that  he  values  civilisation.  The  history 
of  the  tvfo  cannot  be  disentangled.  Civilisation  is  nothing 
more  than  a  name  for  the  old  order  of  the  Aryan  world,  dis- 
solved, but  perpetually  reconstituting  itself  under  a  vast  variety 
of  solvent  influences,  of  which  infinitely  the  most  powerful 
have  been  those  which  have,  slowly,  and  in  some  parts  of  the 
world  much  less  perfectly  than  in  others,  substituted  several 
property  for  collective  ownership."  ^ 

The  method  of  Religious  Motive  is  so  wholly- 
distinct  from  its  predecessors,  the  difference  in 
perspective  caused  by  the  change  from  geocentric 
to  cosmocentric  conduct  is  so  vast,  that  before  it 
is  possible  to  undertake  the  examination  of  its  own 
sufficiency  as  the  basis  of  a  permanent  civilisation 
by  testing  the  manner  of  its  working  in  relation 
to  the  two  great  permanent  stresses,  it  is  necessary 
to  examine  the  method  itself  in  greater  detail. 

Once  more  we  see  a  new  method  dominated 
by  a  new  idea  and  making  an  entirely  fresh  de- 
parture. The  method  of  Religious  Motive,  in 
contrast   with   the   method   of  Instinct    and   the 

^  Sir  Henry  Maine,  Village  Communities,  p.  230,  third  edition,  1876. 

74 


RELIGION   AND   SOCIETY  75 

method  of  Reason,  is,  by  its  very  nature,  de- 
pendent on  the  real  existence  of  the  cosmoeentric 
significance  of  conduct. 

The  fatalist,  holding  that  the  future  has  been 
foreordained  and  rendered  as  unchangeable  as  the 
past,  believes  that  all  things,  himself  included, 
are  controlled  in  their  course  by  a  power  that  acts 
ab  extra.  Thus  he  cannot  be  said  to  recognise 
that  his  conduct  is  of  either  geocentric  or  cosmo- 
eentric import.  The  determinist,  holding  that  the 
future  has  not  been  thus  petrified  by  an  external 
fiat,  nevertheless  believes  that  all  things,  himself 
included,  are  wholly  conditioned  by  the  immutable 
past,  and  controlled  ab  intra.  He  recognises  that, 
just  as  he  is  the  creature  of  his  own  past  life  and 
of  the  antecedents  from  which  he  sprang,  so,  in 
his  turn,  he  is  the  antecedent  of  the  consequences 
that  flow  from  his  acts.  Accordingly  he  seeks  to 
follow  the  line  of  enlightened  conduct  that  is 
expedient  in  its  consequences,  and,  to  him,  conduct 
is  purely  of  geocentric  import. 

But  the  lifelong  self-sacrifice  of  a  rational  being 
cannot  be  justified  on  rational  grounds.  Here  no 
geocentric  motive  will  avail.  A  rule  of  conduct 
that  takes  temporal  things  as  an  end  will  not 
suffice:  a  religion  ad  hoc  will  not  serve.  If  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will  is  not  in  our  possession, 
then,  cadit  quaestio.  For  then  it  is  evident  that 
humanity  is  circumscribed  by  pure  Reason,  and 
limited  to  a  method  that  has  already  been  dis- 
cussed, and  dismissed  as  incapable  of  furnishing 
the  basis  of  a  permanent  civilisation. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  that  Freedom  be  indeed 


76  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

in  our  possession,  then,  and  then  only,  is  conduct 
invested  with  the  dignity  of  cosmocentric  signifi- 
cance, and  ruled  by  a  conscious  relation  to  the 
infinite.  That  relation,  and  that  relation  alone, 
brings  with  it  the  supra-rational  motive  that  creates 
and  inspires  a  sense  of  cosmocentric  duty,  and 
provides  a  valid  justification  for  the  voluntary  and 
lifelong  self-sacrifice  of  a  rational  being.  In  that 
relation  is  a  rule  of  conduct  that  is  not  ad  hoc, 
a  Religion  that  comes  with  its  own  authority — 
an  authority  external  to  ourselves — and  with  an 
imperative  power  that  is  inherent  in  itself.  It 
brings  with  it  behests  that  stand  above  the  demands 
of  the  Race,  and  that  are  higher  than  the  claims 
of  Society.  For,  in  the  method  of  cosmocentric 
motive,  the  cosmocentric  significance  of  conduct  is 
everything.  When  we  think  of  the  overwhelming 
importance  of  the  ''  vraie  signification  de  la  vie,'' 
no  other  consideration  weighs  even  as  dust  in  the 
balance.  Earthly  conduct,  whether  concerning  the 
Race  or  Society,  being  no  longer  an  end,  has 
become  an  instrument.  The  end  is  no  longer 
temporal,  although  we  deal  with  temporality.  The 
unselfish  conduct  that  serves  the  Race,  or  benefits 
Society,  becomes  no  more  than  the  means  of  ex- 
pressing the  consciousness  of  our  relation  to  the 
infinite;  the  means  of  conferring  cosmocentric 
significance  upon  the  brief  life  of  the  individual, 
and  creating  a  bond  with  the  eternal. 

This,  then,  is  the  method  whose  efficiency  we 
have  now  to  estimate,  testing  it,  as  we  tested  the 
method  of  Instinct  and  the  method  of  Reason,  by 
the  evidence  that  it  can  bring  forward  of  ability 


RELIGION   AND   SOCIETY  77 

to  deal  successfully  with  the  two  great  permanent 
stresses  of  life.  In  the  case  of  each  stress  we  have 
first  to  inquire  what  course  the  method  will  seek 
to  take  ;  and  then  to  ask  whether  it  has  the  power 
to  take  that  course.  First  we  address  ourselves 
to  the  social  stress,  and,  just  as  in  considering  the 
relations  of  Reason  with  the  social  stress,  we 
asked  firstly :  *'  Is  it  to  the  interest  of  the  individual 
to  abolish  competition  ? "  and  secondly :  "  Is  it  in 
his  power  to  do  so  ? "  So  now  we  ask  firstly :  "  Is 
it  the  duty  of  the  Individual  to  accept  a  com- 
petitive life  ? "  or,  in  the  alternative :  "  Is  it  his  duty 
to  adopt  a  non-competitive  life  ? "  and  secondly  we 
ask :  "  Is  this  duty  one  that  it  is  in  his  power  to 
carry  out  ?  Is  it  in  his  power,  that  is,  in  the  light 
of  the  life  significant  ? " 

We  have,  then,  to  begin  by  asking  whether  it 
is  the  duty  of  the  Individual  to  perpetuate  the 
conditions  of  unlimited  strife  ?  The  question 
carries  the  answer  upon  the  face  of  it.  The 
adoption  of  unlimited  competition  would  result 
in  a  reversion  to  the  moral  surroundings  of  the 
already  socially-discredited  method  of  Instinct. 
That,  as  we  saw,  is  a  method  of  inconceivable 
wastefulness  and  ruthlessness,  knowing,  at  its  best, 
no  more  than  the  self-sacrifice  of  inborn  impulse. 
In  effect,  it  is  a  world  of  self-seeking,  where  such  a 
thing  as  supra-rational  self-sacrifice  is  all  unknown. 
No  system  could  be  more  distantly  removed  from 
the  life  of  significance.  From  the  standpoint  of 
religious  motive,  the  self-seeking  of  unlimited 
competition  is  not  socially  a-moral,  it  is  actively 
immoral,  for  it  knows  no  moral  law.     The  Com- 


78  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

petitive  Method,  and  the  Method  of  Religious 
Motive,  are  the  very  antitheses  of  one  another,  and 
the  adoption  of  the  former  involves  the  failure  of 
the  latter. 

Next,  then,  we  have  to  consider  what  would  be 
the  moral  position  of  the  Individual  in  the  absence 
of  competition,  and  amid  the  surroundings  of  the 
racially-discredited  method  of  Reason.  The  racial 
aspect  of  the  matter  will  be  discussed  in  the  next 
chapter.  At  present  we  have  only  to  consider  the 
moral  position  of  an  Individual  in  a  world  wherein 
all  property  would  be  vested  in  Society,  and 
nothing  could  be  owned  by  the  Individual. 

Such  a  system  of  life  may  be,  speciously  but 
falsely,  represented  as  though  it  were  altruistic. 
It  is  easy  to  paint  the  alluring  picture  of  a  world 
that  knows  nothing  of  the  warfare  that  we  have 
called  the  social,  or  competitive  stress;  of  a  mil- 
lennium wherein  each  one  is  indirectly  seeking  the 
good  of  all,  while  all  are  indirectly  seeking  the 
good  of  each.  This  view  has  been  expressed  in 
the  well-known  phrase :  "  Each  for  all,  and  all  for 
each." 

But — herein  is  no  true  altruism. 

Deprived  of  the  power  of  working  for  his 
private  advantage,  every  member  of  Society  would 
be  interested  in  raising  the  general  standard  of 
living,  in  order  himself  to  share  in  the  improved 
conditions.  To  take  this  course  would  be  merely 
the  behaviour  of  a  rational  person.  There  would 
be  no  unselfish  element  in  his  direct  motive.  It  is 
still  purely  a  matter  of  interest.  It  is  also  inevit- 
ably  a   matter  of  interest.      One   member  of  a 


RELIGION   AND   SOCIETY  79 

Socialistic  Society  can  only  benefit  another  in- 
directly, and  by  advancing  the  common  good. 
But  this  advance  is  to  his  own  interest ;  therein 
he  also  shares.  Deprived  of  the  power  of  working 
for  his  private  advantage,  he  is  also  deprived  of  the 
power  of  seeking  the  good  of  his  contemporaries 
by  the  sacrifice  of  his  private  interest.  In  the 
same  manner,  action  that  is  injurious  to  his  con- 
temporaries, that  is,  to  the  social  machine,  is 
merely  the  behaviour  of  a  fool.  It  injures  the 
doer  as  much  as  any  of  his  fellows.  The  avoid- 
ance of  such  conduct  is  also  necessarily  interested. 
The  geocentric  motive  follows  conduct  into  its 
minutest  ramifications ;  it  cannot  be  shaken  off. 
The  member  of  a  Socialist  Society  may  have  every 
advantage  of  freedom  from  anxiety,  of  material 
welfare,  and  aesthetic  enjoyment.  He  has  gained 
the  whole  world,  but  he  has  sold  his  soul.  Small 
wonder  that,  as  we  pointed  out  in  Chap.  V,  horror 
is  inspired  by  such  a  life,  intense  in  proportion  to 
the  nakedness  with  which  its  rational  character  is 
exposed.  Small  wonder  that,  in  its  advocacy, 
pure  Reason  loses  its  old-time  cogency  especially 
and  essentially  among  the  least  selfish  members 
of  the  community — among  those,  that  is,  to  whom 
the  significance  of  life  is  life  itself;  those  to  whom 
the  consciousness  of  relation  with  the  infinite 
comes  with  its  own  authority.  Let  us  make  no 
mistake.  Competition,  indeed,  is  abolished.  But 
if  the  self-seeking  of  competition  disappears,  so 
also  does  every  possibility  of  unselfish  conduct. 
To  such  an  order  the  word  "moral"  does  not 
apply. 


80  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

The  converse  is  also  true. 

Such  a  system  of  life  might,  also  with  specious- 
ness  and  falsity,  be  represented  as  though  it  were 
selfish.  A  repulsive  picture  of  it  may  be  painted 
as  easily  as  an  alluring  one — the  picture  of  a  world 
in  which  no  individual  directly  sought  the  good  of 
Society,  and  in  which  no  one  directly  sought  to 
benefit  him.  In  point  of  fact,  a  non-competitive 
world  might  be  described  by  the  phrase  "  None  for 
all,  and  all  for  no  one,"  quite  as  accurately  as  by  the 
phrase  that  we  have  quoted  above.  It  is  only  that 
we  are  looking  at  the  reverse  side  of  the  medal, 
instead  of  the  obverse. 

But — there  is  herein  no  true  selfishness. 

Interested  in  raising  the  general  standard  of 
living,  in  order  to  share  in  the  improved  con- 
ditions, every  member  of  a  Socialistic  Society 
would  nevertheless  be  deprived  of  the  power  of 
working  directly  for  his  own  private  advantage. 
For  it  is  evident  that,  as  a  common  ownership, 
with  the  one  hand,  takes  away  all  possibility  of 
unselfish  action,  so,  with  the  other  hand,  it  takes 
away  all  possibility  of  self-seeking  at  the  expense 
of  contemporaries.  Theoretically,  such  a  system 
has  eliminated  all  selfish  promptings,  and,  under  it, 
when  a  man  shapes  his  life  merely  to  his  own 
advantage,  there  can  be  no  directly  selfish  element 
in  the  mode  by  which  he  seeks  this  end. 

To  such  an  order  the  word  "immoral"  does 
not  apply. 

Individual  conduct,  under  a  socialistic  form  of 
Society,  is  then,  of  necessity,  neither  moral  nor 
immoral ;  it  is  as  blankly  a-moral  as  pure  Reason 


RELIGION   AND   SOCIETY  81 

itself,  whose  legitimate  offspring  it  is.  When  life 
has  been  denuded  of  all  competitive  environment, 
it  has  also  been  emptied  of  all  moral  content,  and 
we  find  that,  in  the  method  of  Religious  Motive, 
hostility  to  a  non-competitive  life  is  articulus 
stantis  aut  cadentis. 

Thus  the  method  of  Religious  Motive  would 
be  equally  stultified  by  the  adoption,  either  of  a 
system  of  unlimited  competition,  or  of  a  purely 
non-competitive  system.  A  deadlock  appears  to 
have  been  reached,  and  the  second  question  arises : 
"  Is  it,  after  all,  within  the  power  of  the  individual 
to  avoid,  at  the  same  time,  the  socially  immoral 
character  of  the  competitive  method  of  Instinct, 
and  the  socially  a-moral  character  of  the  non- 
competitive method  of  Reason  ?  Is  it  within  his 
power  so  to  frame  his  life,  that  his  social  conduct 
shall  be  of  cosmocentric  significance  ? " 

In  answering  this  question,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  two  elements  are  necessary  for 
significance  in  conduct.  The  first  is  liberty.  Now, 
in  our  use  of  the  word  "  liberty  "  there  will  be  no 
reference  to  freedom  of  will.  It  will  be  used  only 
with  reference  to  external  circumstances  that  are 
of  such  a  nature  as  may  either  provide  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  that  freedom,  or  render  its 
possession  nugatory  and  valueless.  The  man, 
whose  external  circumstances  are  those  of  a  prison, 
has  little  opportunity  for  its  exercise,  as  compared 
with  the  man  on  horseback.  Such  liberty — the 
opportunity  of  acting  in  a  manner  that  may  be 
moral  or  immoral — is  lost  under  the  socially 
a-moral  method  of  Reason.      For,  thereunder  a 

F 


82  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

man  is  deprived  both  of  the  opportunity  of  work- 
ing directly  for  his  own  private  advantage,  and  of 
directly  seeking  the  good  of  his  contemporaries  by 
its  sacrifice. 

The  second  element  that  is  necessary  for  signi- 
ficance in  conduct  is  law,  and  the  opportunity  of 
acting  in  a  manner  that,  by  the  surrender  of 
liberty,  makes  service  truly  significant — an  oppor- 
tunity that  is  lost  in  the  social  chaos  of  the  method 
of  Instinct.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  area 
within  which  significant  conduct  is  possible  ex- 
tends as  far,  and  only  as  far,  as  we  have  both 
liberty  and  law  simultaneously. 

How,  then,  can  competition  help?  Has  it 
anything  to  offer  when  we  seek  these  essentials? 
We  see  clearly  that  it  has,  that  the  competitive 
method  furnishes  liberty  to  the  individual,  and 
that  it  only  fails  to  be  significant  socially,  because 
it  excludes  all  moral  law. 

How  can  the  method  of  Reason  help?  We 
see  that,  as  against  the  social  chaos  of  Instinct, 
it  stands  for  law,  and  that  it  fails  to  be  signifi- 
cant socially,  only  because  it  excludes  all  moral 
liberty. 

A  remarkable  situation  is  thus  disclosed. 

Each  method  fails  to  confer  significance  upon 
conduct  when  it  is  carried  out  alone,  and  yet,  if 
each  were  limited  by  the  other,  the  two  together 
— the  competitive  and  the  non-competitive — 
would  succeed.  Each  would  furnish  one  of  the 
two  elements  that  are  necessary  antecedents  to 
significance  in  conduct.  If,  that  is,  each  could  be 
taken  as  the  complement  of  the  other,  if  the  one 


RELIGION   AND   SOCIETY  83 

could  come  into  operation  at  the  point  at  which 
the  other  would  become  destructive  if  it  stood 
alone,  then  the  reciprocating  machinery  of  a 
method  of  Religious  Motive  would  have  been 
put  together  ready  to  act  as  a  whole. 

But,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out  (page  59), 
they  cannot  amalgamate  spontaneously.  They 
possess  no  power  to  do  so.  Pure  Reason,  the 
enemy  of  the  Race,  knows  only  the  interest  of 
the  Individual,  or  rather,  of  Society.  Instinct,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  the  servant  of  the  Race,  and  the 
enemy  of  Society.  The  history  of  the  growth  of 
Reason  is  the  history  of  the  overthrow  of  Instinct. 
Prepotent  Reason  excludes  the  office  of  Instinct, 
and,  if  they  were  alone,  the  prepotence  would  be 
temporary  ;  having  obtained  the  mastery,  it  would 
become  self-destructive,  and  Instinct  would  come 
by  its  own  again.  The  hostility  is  essential ;  they 
are  mutually  exclusive. 

Therefore  the  conditions  have  changed,  and  we 
see  that  the  answer  to  the  question  that  we  are 
discussing,  viz. :  "  Is  it  within  the  power  of  the 
Individual  so  to  frame  his  life  that  his  conduct 
shall  be  of  cosmocentric  significance?"  depends 
upon  the  answer  to  the  narrower  and  antecedent 
question :  "  Is  it  within  his  power  to  use  each 
method  to  make  good  the  flaw  in  the  other? 
Does  he,  that  is,  possess  a  solvent  of  each,  a  power 
over  both,  that  shall  enable  them  to  enter  into 
combination  ? " 

It  will  be  remembered  that,  at  the  beginning 
of  this  chapter,  we  saw  that  the  method  of  Reli- 
gious Motive  was  possessed  of  a  quality  that  dis- 


84  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

tinguished  it  from  its  predecessors,  and  that  we 
found  this  distinctive  quahty  in  the  fact  that  it 
\  comes  with  an  authority  external  to  ourselves. 
In  order  that  this  distinctive  quality  may  be 
thrown  into  greater  relief,  let  us  approach  the 
question  by  comparing  the  geocentric  methods, 
from  which  it  is  absent.  Take  the  method  of 
Reason :  the  purely  rational  being  is  both  servant 
and  master,  for  he  serves  himself.  His  allegiance 
is  to  himself;  the  care  of  himself  is  his  work. 
His  allegiance  is,  then,  to  his  work.  In  this  work 
a  non-competitive  system  is  his  instrument.  But, 
just  as  he  is  at  once  his  own  servant  and  his  own 
master,  so  his  instrument  and  his  work  are  one. 
He  cannot  vary,  that  is,  from  his  non-competitive 
system,  for  then,  as  we  have  seen,  it  would  become 
inevitable  that  he  should  injure  himself.  He  pos- 
sesses no  selective  power.  He  is  chained  to  the 
oar,  as  much  as  the  instinctive  animal  is  chained  to 
the  foregone  conclusions  of  inborn  impulse. 

But  these  conditions  do  not  obtain  at  all  in  the 
method  of  ReKgious  Motive;  they  are  obviated 
by  the  distinctive  quality  of  that  method — by  the 
fact  that  it  comes  with  its  own  authority,  and  with 
an  imperative  power  that  is  inherent  in  itself. 
The  Individual  becomes  a  servant  only ;  his  alle- 
giance is  not  to  himself,  but  to  him  whom  he 
serves ;  a  life  of  significant  service  is  his  work,  and 
competition  and  its  reverse  are  alike  no  more  than 
his  instruments.  He  is  a  servant;  his  allegiance 
is  not  primarily  to  his  work,  and  not  at  all  to  his 
instruments.  He  is  not  chained  to  them,  he  pos- 
sesses the  power  of  selection ;  he  may  lay  down 


RELIGION  AND   SOCIETY  85 

one,  and  take  up  another,  as  suits  the  purpose  of 
the  work  before  him.  He  may  lay  down  a  com- 
petitive system  and  take  up  a  non- competitive 
one,  or  vice  versa,  as  the  significance  of  his  life 
demands. 

Thus  we  find  that  the  method  of  Religious 
Motive  is  able  to  retain  the  element  that  is  of 
value  to  the  significance  of  life  in  each  geocentric 
system,  and  at  the  same  time  able  to  reject  the 
social  a-morahty  of  the  one,  and  the  social  immor- 
ality of  the  other. 

So  far  as  Society  is  concerned,  it  retains  the 
element  of  liberty,  necessary  to  significance  in 
social  conduct,  that  belongs  to  the  method  of 
Instinct,  and  so  obviates  the  social  a-morality  of 
Reason.  At  the  same  time,  it  retains  the  element 
of  law,  not  less  essential  than  liberty  to  significance 
in  social  conduct,  that  belongs  to  the  method  of 
Reason.  The  liberty  of  the  competitive  system, 
thus  conditioned  by  the  law  of  the  non- competitive 
method,  becomes  the  liberty  of  a  trustee.  Does 
a  man  win  in  the  contest?  The  prize  does  not 
belong  to  him,  except  in  name :  he  is  a  trustee. 
Under  the  law,  all  that  he  gains  by  competition 
he  must  forego  in  a  manner  that  is  the  very  nega- 
tion of  self-seeking.  Does  he  lose  in  the  contest  ? 
Provision  for  his  needs  becomes  the  object  of  the 
trust.  Thus  the  internal  friction  of  the  social 
machine  is  reduced  to  a  minimum,  and  the  reten- 
tion of  the  element  of  law,  that  belongs  to  the 
method  of  Reason — the  subjection,  that  is,  of  the 
Individual  to  Society — obviates  the  social  immor- 
ality of  the  method  of  Instinct. 


86  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

It  will  be  seen,  moreover,  that,  in  the  method 
of  Religious  Motive,  it  is  the  Individual  himself 
who  takes  his  own  course.  For  if,  on  the  one 
hand,  his  action  is  forcibly  controlled — if  his  liberty- 
is  taken  away  by  external  circumstances — so  also 
is  the  significance  of  his  conduct  removed.  And 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  his  action  has  not  the  oppor- 
tunity of  being  controlled  by  a  law  that  he  ought 
to  obey — if  such  a  law  is  not  provided  by  external 
circumstances — then  again,  the  significance  of  his 
conduct  is  removed.  To  be  significant,  his  action 
must  be  from  within.  Constrained  conduct,  like 
lawless  conduct,  however  right,  is  not  righteous. 
The  strained  mercy,  twice  damned — that  takes 
away  the  grace  of  life  and  curses  the  giver  with 
the  sense  of  state-compulsion,  and  curses  the 
recipient  with  the  sense  of  booty  acquired — is  alien 
to  the  cosmocentric  method.  In  that  method,  and 
in  that  only,  is  the  grace  of  life  to  be  found — the 
grace  that  blesses  the  giver  and  the  taker,  the  grace 
that  binds  together.  And  he  who  will  can  trace 
herein  the  injunction  that  comes  to  us  from  of  old, 
that  we  should  love  one  another. 

The  conclusion  reached  is,  then,  that  the  cosmo- 
centric method,  possessed  of  the  power  to  retain 
both  liberty  and  law,  provides  a  machinery  for 
significant  conduct  that  is  perfect,  so  far  as  Society 
is  concerned.  The  duty  of  the  Individual,  with 
regard  to  competition,  and  with  regard  to  non- 
competition, has  become  clear,  and  the  power  of 
the  method  of  Religious  Motive  to  deal  successfully 
with  the  social  stress  stands  vindicated. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  RELATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS 
MOTIVE  TO  THE  RACIAL  STRESS:  THE  DUTY 
OF  THE  INDIVIDUAL  WITH  REGARD  TO  THE 
RACE 

Our  next  step  is  to  ask  what  evidence  the  method 
of  Religious  Motive  brings  forward  of  ability  to 
cope  w^ith  the  racial  stress.  We  must  estimate  its 
racial  efficiency  by  applying  the  now  familiar  test 
of  inquiring,  firstly,  what  course  it  will  seek  to 
take,  and,  secondly,  whether  it  has  the  power  to 
take  that  course. 

First,  then,  we  seek  to  know  the  duty  that,  as 
an  element  in  the  fife  of  significance,  the  Indi- 
vidual owes  to  the  Race.  We  ask,  that  is  :  "  Is  it 
the  duty  of  the  Individual  to  carry  the  multiplica- 
tion of  the  Race  to  its  utmost  limits,  as  is  done 
in  the  method  of  Instinct  ? "  or,  in  the  alternative  : 
"Is  it  his  duty  to  act  in  a  contrary  manner,  as 
would  be  done  in  the  method  of  Reason  ?  " 

Having  arrived  at  an  answer  to  these  questions, 
we  then  ask :  "Is  this  duty  one  that  is  in  his 
power,  consistently  with  the  cosmocentric  signi- 
ficance of  life,  to  carry  out?  Is  it  within  the 
power  of  the  Individual  so  to  frame  his  life  that 
his  racial  conduct  shall  be  of  cosmocentric  signifi- 
cance ? " 

87 


88  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

What  we  have  called  the  social  immorality 
of  the  method  of  Instinct  already  stands  con- 
demned. Its  racial  morality  is  now  in  question. 
The  method  of  Instinct  makes  provision  for  the 
due  perpetuation  of  the  Race — it  sacrifices  the 
Individual  without  mercy  in  the  pursuit  of  that 
aim.  It  cannot  be  said  that  such  a  system  is 
racially  immoral.  Nevertheless,  it  knows  no  liberty 
in  the  matter — it  knows  not  the  liberty  to  regu- 
late the  birthrate  that  is  given  by  Reason,  and 
thus,  for  lack  of  this  liberty,  it  cannot,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  method  of  Religious  Motive, 
be  said  to  have  any  moral  quality.  It  makes  due 
provision  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  Race :  it  is 
not  racially  immoral.  In  the  pursuit  of  this  aim, 
however,  it  knows  no  liberty:  it  is  not  racially 
moral.  Judged  by  the  standard  of  cosmocentric 
motive,  the  method  of  Instinct,  socially  immoral, 
is  found  to  be  racially  a-moral,  because  it  knows 
no  racial  liberty. 

We  have  next  to  consider  the  moral  aspect 
of  the  alternative  method  of  Reason,  a  method 
already  racially  discredited  as  one  that,  cutting  off 
the  entail  of  life,  would  spend  its  riches  upon 
Society.  But,  what  is  morally  involved  in  such 
conduct  ?  When  we  consider  the  geons  of  the 
future,  and  the  generations  that  are,  perhaps, 
to  come,  we  not  only  see  that  the  question  is  one 
of  life  or  no-life,  upon  a  stupendous,  indeed 
upon  a  measureless  scale,  but  also  that  the  lives 
that  are,  perhaps,  to  follow  after  us,  are  lives 
of  significance.  In  the  provision  or  non-pro- 
vision, of  life  for  the   days  to   come,  it   is  the 


RELIGION  AND   THE   RACE        89 

provision,  or  non-provision,  of  significance  itself 
that  is  really  at  stake.  If  we  default  now,  that 
which  is  lacking  will  not  be  made  good.  So  far  as 
we  can  see,  the  very  existence  of  significance, 
throughout  a  measureless  future,  depends  upon 
our  acts  in  the  present.  So  far  as  we  can  see, 
we  stand  before  One  Who  gathers  where  He  has 
not  strawed ;  Who,  in  the  faithful  discharge  of 
our  duties  to  Society,  sees  no  more  than  the 
return  of  the  one  talent  that  was  handed  to  us. 
Thus  the  continuance  of  the  entail  is  an  essential 
part  of  the  inheritance,  vital  to  the  method  of 
Religious  Motive,  and  it  is  the  very  height  of  law- 
lessness, by  failing  in  the  obligation  that  came 
with  the  inheritance,  to  secure  the  destruction  of 
entailed  significance  at  the  wanton  bidding  of 
Reason.  Judged  by  the  cosmocentric  standard, 
the  method  of  Reason,  socially  a-moral,  is  found 
to  be  racially  immoral,  because  it  knows  no 
racial  law. 

Thus  the  method  of  Religious  Motive  would 
be  equally  stultified  by  the  exclusive  adoption 
of  the  racial  element  in  either  of  the  geocentric 
methods:  it  is  precluded  from  doing  so  by  the 
racial  a-morality  of  Instinct,  and  the  racial 
immorality  of  Reason.  So  far  as  racial  conduct 
is  concerned,  they  are  alike  destructive  to  the 
significance  of  life,  and  again  a  deadlock  appears 
to  have  been  reached  analogous  to  that  encoun- 
tered when,  in  the  last  chapter  (page  78),  we  were 
dealing  with  the  social  aspect  of  the  question. 

Thus  the  second  question  arises  :  "  Is  it  within 
the  power  of  the  Individual  to  avoid,  at  the  same 


90 


THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 


time,  the  racially  a-moral  character  of  the  method 
of  Instinct,  and  the  racially  immoral  character  of 
the  method  of  Reason  ?  Is  it  within  his  power  so 
to  frame  his  life  that  his  conduct,  with  regard  to 
the  Race,  shall  be  of  cosmocentric  significance  ? " 

The  analogy  of  the  present  argument,  dealing 
with  the  Race,  with  that  in  the  last  chapter, 
dealing  with  Society,  is  now  becoming  evident, 
and  it  may,  perhaps,  be  seen  most  clearly  by  a 
diagrammatic  summary  of  the  geocentric  systems, 
as  they  appear  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
method  of  Religious  Motive. 


Instinct 


Reason  . 


Society 

Society  sacrificed  for 

the    sake    of    the 

Race. 
Social    liberty,   but 

no      social      law. 

Socially  immoral. 
No      significance 

owing  to  absence 

of  law. 


Race 

Devoted  to  service  of 
Race. 

Racial   law,   but   no 

racial       liberty. 

Racially  a-moral. 
No  significance  owing 

to    absence   of 

liberty. 


Devoted  to  service 
of  Society. 

Social  law,  but  no 
social  liberty.  So- 
cially a-moral. 

No  significance 
owing  to  absence 
of  liberty. 


Race    sacrificed     for 

the  sake  of  Society. 
Racial    liberty,    but 

no     racial     law. 

Racially  immoral. 
No  significance  owing 

to  absence  of  law. 


Recalling  (page  81)  that  the  area  within  which 
significant  conduct  is  possible  extends  so  far,  and 
only  so  far,  as  we  have  at  the  same  time  both  hberty 
and  law,  we  ask  whether  these  geocentric  systems 


RELIGION   AND  THE  RACE        91 

have  anjiihing  to  offer  racially,  when  we  seek  for 
these  essentials. 

We  find  that  they  have.  We  see  that,  as 
against  the  racial  destructiveness — the  anarchy — 
that  is  involved  in  the  method  of  Reason,  Instinct 
furnishes  law,  and  that  it  only  fails  to  be  significant 
racially,  because  it  cannot  vary  its  method ;  it  ex- 
cludes liberty.  In  the  like  manner,  we  see  that 
Reason  has  provided  us  with  racial  liberty — the 
power  of  controlling  the  birthrate — and  that  it 
only  fails  to  be  significant  because  it  knows  no 
racial  law. 

Thus  when  either  stands  alone,  it  fails  to 
confer  racial  significance  upon  conduct,  and  yet, 
if  each  were  limited  by  the  other,  the  two 
together  would  succeed.  If,  that  is,  each  were 
to  be  taken  as  the  complement  of  the  other,  if 
each  could  come  into  operation  at  the  point  at 
which  the  other  would  become  non-significant 
if  it  stood  alone,  then  racial  conduct  would  have 
become  significant. 

But,  by  themselves,  this  is  impossible.  We 
have  already  seen  that  they  are  mutually  exclusive, 
and  that  they  cannot  amalgamate  spontaneously. 
Therefore  the  answer  to  the  question  that  we  are 
discussing,  viz. :  "  Is  it  within  the  power  of  the 
Individual  so  to  frame  his  life  that  his  racial  con- 
duct shall  be  of  cosmocentric  significance  ? "  turns 
upon  the  answer  to  the  narrower  and  antecedent 
question:  "Is  it  within  his  power  to  use  the 
advantage  of  each  method — the  law  of  the  one  and 
the  liberty  of  the  other — and  to  shun,  at  the  same 
time,  their  respective  disadvantages  1 " 


92  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Again,  we  find  such  a  power  in  the  method  of 
Religious  Motive.  That  method  comes  with  ex- 
ternal authority.  Under  its  imperative  influence 
the  individual  is  not  bound  by  either  of  the  geo- 
centric methods;  they  become  no  more  than 
instruments  in  his  hands. 

The  law  under  which  he  has  himself  come  into 
the  possession  of  life — the  law  that  justifies  his 
own  existence — is  the  law  of  entail.  He  inherited 
owing  to  the  operation  of  that  law.  If  his  own 
life  is  to  be  significant,  he  must  remember  that  the 
law  is  definite.  The  entail  must  not  be  selfishly 
broken. 

But  liberty — the  power  that  Reason  gives  to 
break  the  entail — is  not  less  essential  to  significance 
than  is  the  law  itself.  Only  in  the  presence  of 
that  power  can  obedience  to  the  law  become  a 
significant  act. 

Thus  we  find  that  the  selective  power  of  the 
method  of  Religious  Motive  enables  it  to  retain 
all  that  is  of  value  to  significance  in  each  of  the 
geocentric  methods.  So  far  as  the  Race  is  con- 
cerned, it  retains  the  law — the  subjection  of  the 
Individual  to  the  Race — that  is  characteristic  of  the 
method  of  Instinct,  and  thus  obviates  the  racial 
destructiveness  that  is  characteristic  of  Reason.  It 
retains,  at  the  same  time,  the  racial  liberty  that 
comes  with  Reason,  and  thus  obviates  the  racial 
a-morality  of  Instinct. 

The  cosmocentric  importance  of  the  racial  duty 
of  the  individual  is  now  clear.  The  method  of 
Religious  Motive,  retaining  both  law  and  liberty, 


RELIGION   AND   THE   RACE        93 

both  service  and  freedom,  provides  a  perfect 
machinery  for  significance  in  racial  conduct,  and 
its  power  to  deal  with  the  racial  stress,  no  less 
successfully  than  with  the  social  stress,  stands 
vindicated. 


CHAPTER  XI 

MUTUAL  RELATIONS  OF  SOCIETY  AND  THE  RACE 
UNDER   THE   METHOD   OF   RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE 

In  order  to  complete  our  review  of  the  mutual 
dependence  of  the  members  of  the  triad  that  we 
are  considering — the  Individual,  Society,  and  the 
Race — the  relations  of  the  two  latter  claim  our 
attention  next.  Seeing  that  the  unborn  Race 
cannot,  of  itself,  take  part  in  this  interaction,  our 
inquiry  is  narrowed  down  to  the  consideration  of 
the  position  that  Society,  moved  by  a  sense  of 
cosmocentric  duty,  will  take  up  towards  the  Race. 
Strictly  speaking,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to 
regard  Society  as  possessed  of  duties  in  the  same 
manner  as  an  individual,  for  the  duty  of  Society,  if 
we  may  make  use  of  the  phrase,  is  no  more  than 
the  duty  of  individuals  acting  in  concert.  Never- 
theless, it  is  natural  that  the  corporate  action  of 
a  number  of  individuals,  prompted  by  the  influence 
of  Religious  Motive,  should  be  very  different  from 
the  action  that  they  would  take  under  the  influence 
of  pure  Reason. 

It  will  be  remembered  that,  when  we  reached 
a  parallel  position  in  dealing  with  the  action  of 
Society  under  the  method  of  Reason,  we  found 
that  its  interest  was  identical  with  that  of  the 
Individual,  and  its  attitude  towards  the  Race  not 

94 


RELIGIOUS   SOCIETY  AND  RACE     95 

less  hostile.  But  we  have  seen  already  that  this 
attitude  of  the  Individual  towards  the  Race  is 
reversed  in  the  method  of  Religious  Motive,  and 
that  cosmocentric  considerations  require  him  to 
act  unselfishly,  and  in  favour  of  the  Race. 

Therefore,  when  we  pass  from  the  method  of 
Reason  and  interest  to  that  of  Religious  Motive 
and  duty,  the  action  of  Society  will  be  reversed 
also ;  it  also  will  become  ancillary  to  the  Race,  for 
racial  duty  will  not  be  less  binding  when  Indi- 
viduals act  in  social  concert. 

The  question  then  arises :  "  In  what  manner 
will  this  new  attitude  of  Society  manifest  itself  ? " 
In  seeking  the  answer  to  this  question,  we  must 
hark  back  to  the  cause  of  the  hostility  of  Society 
to  the  Race  under  the  method  of  Reason.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  we  found  this  ultimately  in 
the  inequality  of  the  length  of  life  between  the 
transitory  Society  (a  length  on  the  average  the 
same  as  that  of  the  Individual)  and  the  longevous 
Race.  It  is  necessary  to  recall  this,  because, 
although  the  method  of  Religious  Motive  is  not 
directly  concerned  with  geocentric  interests  or  their 
reconciliation,  we  find  that  the  said  inequality  never- 
theless introduces  a  new  problem  into  that  method. 
The  dim  future  of  the  Race  is  far  removed  from 
the  purview  of  the  Individual,  and  the  manner, 
therefore,  in  which  he  can  carry  out  his  duty,  to 
those  so  distant  from  him,  is  obscure  and  uncertain. 

Thus  it  comes  about  that,  without  considera- 
tion for  the  individual's  interest,  the  racial  duty 
of  individuals  acting  in  concert — of  Society,  that 
is — is    confined    to    the    provision   of  the   means 


96  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

whereby  that  duty  will  be  set  clearly  before  its 
members. 

This  is  the  very  office  of  Society  acting  racially 
under  the  method  of  Religious  Motive.  All  its 
organisation,  so  far  as  it  conforms  racially  to  that 
method,  will  be  tributary  to  the  provision  of 
definite  means  whereby  the  Individual  can  serve 
the  Race ;  to  the  forging  of  a  link  that  shall  join 
the  living  of  the  present  to  the  living  of  the 
future. 

We  find  that  Society  has  provided  this  link  in 
the  organisation  of  the  family  as  a  social  institution. 

The  life  of  the  family,  longer  than  that  of  the 
Individual,  shorter  than  that  of  the  Race,  is  not 
incommensurable  with  either.  In  the  institution 
of  the  family,  we  can  trace  the  nexus  that  Society, 
acting  under  the  influence  of  the  method  that  we 
are  considering,  has  created  between  the  two.  The 
duty  of  the  Individual  with  regard  to  the  long- 
drawn  life  of  the  Race,  otherwise  so  dim  and 
uncertain,  becomes  clear-cut  and  definite  when  it 
is  transmuted  into  duty  to  the  family  from  which 
he  springs,  whose  love  he  shares,  whose  traditions 
he  inherits,  and  whose  name  he  must  hand  on. 
We  have  seen  (page  52)  that  marriage  would  be 
the  height  of  folly  in  a  purely  rational  Individual, 
and  (page  58)  that  any  equivalent  maintenance 
of  the  Race  would  not  be  less  irrational  in  a  com- 
munist Society.  We  see  now,  however,  under  the 
method  of  Religious  Motive,  that  marriage  becomes 
the  very  means  for  the  performance  of  the  racial 
duty  of  the  Individual.  Married,  he  becomes  one 
of  those  who  are  consecrated  for  the  provision  of 


RELIGIOUS   SOCIETY  AND  RACE     97 

significance  itself  in  the  future,  and  the  water 
of  his  life  is  turned  into  wine. 

Thus  the  maintenance  of  the  institution  of 
the  family  stands  in  relation  to  Society  much 
as  the  duty  of  significant  racial  conduct  stands  to 
the  Individual. 

Small  wonder,  then,  that  the  family  should, 
among  so  many  and  such  various  peoples,  and  in 
ages  so  far  removed  from  one  another,  have  been 
regarded  with  veneration  as  an  institution  possessed 
of  a  semi-sacred  character,  and  as  one  connected 
with  the  expression  of  the  religious  sense  of  a  com- 
munity. This  sentiment  extends  even  beyond  the 
limits  of  any  particular  formation  of  the  family. 
Among  ourselves,  the  home  is  inviolable,  and  the 
marriage  that  has  not  received  the  sanction  of 
religion  is  regarded  with  doubt  and  contempt. 
Among  Mohammedans,  the  Nazarene  can  live  and 
carry  on  daily  intercourse  cheerfully,  but  only  on 
condition  that  he  recollects  that  there  are  two  sub- 
jects to  which  he  must  never  refer — the  Moham- 
medan's God,  and  the  Mohammedan's  women. 
Among  the  Chinese,  as  we  shall  see  further  on, 
sentiment  regards  the  connection  between  the 
family  and  the  faith  as  even  more  intimate.  In 
the  mind  of  the  Chinaman  they  are  indissoluble ; 
they  have  been  fused  into  one  conception  and  are 
identified  with  one  another. 

It  is  also  interesting  to  observe  that  the 
occasions  of  the  public  expression  of  the  emotions 
are  frequently  found  in  events  connected  with  the 
family.  The  widespread  hospitality  of  the  festivi- 
ties of  a  wedding,  the  congratulations  that  attend 

G 


98  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

upon  the  birth  gf  a  child,  and  the  mourning  that 
is  openly  worn  by  the  relatives  when  death  has 
visited  their  number,  are  all  acknowledgments  that 
the  family  possesses  an  importance  that  extends 
beyond  its  threshold.  Love  of  home,  again,  is 
closely  connected  with  love  of  country,  and  the 
conception  that  Society  is  the  protector  of  the 
family  is  expressed  in  patriotism. 

If  we  recall  once  more  the  fact  that,  in  the 
method  of  Reason,  the  respective  interests  of 
Society  and  the  Race  are  diametrically  opposed 
to  one  another,  it  becomes  evident  that  the  family 
— the  nexus  by  which  Society,  under  the  influence 
of  Religious  Motive,  has  joined  the  two — is  an 
institution  that  is  not  to  be  justified  in  pure 
Reason.  Thus,  when  Society,  acting  in  its  own 
interest,  forgets  that  its  racial  duty  is  focussed 
upon  the  family,  the  evils  that  follow  are  neces- 
sarily racial  in  character.  The  operation  of  the 
English  death  duties  may  be  taken  as  an  example. 
These  constitute  a  frontal  attack  upon  the  family 
as  an  institution.  The  legislation  that  is  respon- 
sible for  them  regards  the  death  of  a  father  as 
an  opportunity  for  plundering  his  children,  and 
Society  reaps  the  benefit.  Looking  at  the  matter, 
however,  from  a  racial  point  of  view,  we  see  that, 
short  of  actually  fining  a  man  for  the  possession 
of  offspring,  it  would  be  diflficult  to  conceive  a 
more  direct  incitement  to  the  commission  of  racial 
suicide  by  what  is  termed  "limitation  of  the 
family." 

The  corporate  action  of  Society  with  regard  to 
the  future  is  largely  determined  by  voting,  and 


RELIGIOUS   SOCIETY  AND   RACE     99 

such  legislation  as  the  above  will  continue  so  long 
as  the  family  is  ignored  in  the  polling-booth,  and 
the  childless  of  either  sex — those,  that  is,  who  have 
social,  but  no  racial  duties — are  admitted  to  the 
franchise  on  equal  terms  with  the  parents  of 
legitimate  children.  Properly,  the  franchise  is  an 
appurtenance  of  the  family  and  not  of  the  indivi- 
dual. The  qualification  for  it  should  be  the 
possession  of  legitimate  children ;  and  its  exercise 
should  be  the  joint  act  of  two  parents,  or  the  sole 
act  of  the  survivor  of  them.  The  character  of 
Society  in  the  present  day  is  disclosed  by  the  fact 
that  one  might  as  well  cry  for  the  moon  as  ask  for 
the  realisation  of  these  views.  Nevertheless,  it 
will  only  be  when  they  have  been  realised  that 
there  will  be  an  end  of  the  time-serving  that  is  the 
bane  of  representative  government  and  the  curse 
of  democracy.  Indeed,  if  we  would  know  the 
worth  of  any  form  of  government,  of  any  policy,  or 
of  any  legislation,  let  us  ask  whether,  or  no,  it 
tends  to  strengthen  the  family,  and  to  advance  the 
honour  of  the  married  state.  This  is  the  supreme 
test  of  social  action,  and  the  very  criterion  of 
statesmanship.  For,  if  the  family  is  not  the  unit 
of  Society,  nor  the  unit  of  the  Race,  but  the 
nexus  between  the  two,  then  the  honour  and 
importance  that  are  attached  to  it,  and  the  rigidity 
with  which  it  is  maintained,  will  give  us  a  measure 
of  the  vitality  of  any  civilisation. 


CHAPTER  XII 

JUSTIFICATION  OF  THE  METHOD  OF  RELIGIOUS 

MOTIVE 

Whether  we  look  at  past  history,  or  the  prevailing 
condition  of  modern  life,  we  see  that  the  authority 
of  cosmocentric  motive,  though  it  has  ebbed  and 
flowed,  has  not  been,  and  is  not  yet,  the  dominant 
influence  in  the  civilisation  of  the  white  man.  It 
has  not  been  successful  on  a  great  scale  in  that 
civilisation  in  the  past.  The  history  of  Europe, 
in  spite  of  the  nominal  sway  of  a  wholly  cosmo- 
centric religion  for  more  than  a  thousand  years, 
records  great  nations  and  cultures  that  have  de- 
clined and  practically  disappeared.  If  we  turn 
to  the  present,  we  find  that  the  authority  of 
cosmocentric  motive  is  a  decaying  force.  Day 
by  day  we  see  the  increasing  revolt  against  both 
the  social  and  the  racial  stress.  We  see  the  ever- 
rising  prominence  of  views  that,  whether  they 
bear  the  label  of  Socialism  or  not,  are  socialistic 
in  character,  and  also  an  ever-falling  birthrate  that, 
from  year  to  year,  is  the  "lowest  on  record." 
These  phenomena  are  not  confined  to  one  nation 
or  tongue ;  they  are  practically  co-extensive  with 
all  Western  civilisation.  Are  we  then  to  say  that 
the  method  of  Religious  Motive  has  failed  ? 

Certainly   not.     When   disasters    occur,   it   is 

100 


METHOD   OF   RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE    101 

unreasonable  to  blame  the  seer  whose  warnings 
were  disregarded,  or  the  leader  whose  directions 
were  disobeyed.  That  which  counsels  endurance 
of  the  two  stresses  should  not  be  held  responsible 
when  revolt  takes  place.  Recorded  history,  as  we 
have  said  before,  is  a  complex  resultant  of  forces, 
and  we  are  only  concerned  with  the  directions  in 
which  its  invisible  components  act.  Our  argument 
is  not  affected  by  their  relative  magnitudes.  The 
past  and  present  facts  of  European  history  do  no 
more  than  show  that  the  method  of  Reason  is  still 
dominant,  and  that  the  liability  to  fail,  no  less  than 
the  possibility  of  success,  is  implicit  in  the  liberty 
that  is  demanded  by  the  method  of  Religious 
Motive. 

But  little  remains.  In  the  preceding  chapters 
we  have  seen  that  the  method  of  Religious  Motive 
does  not  seek  geocentric  interest,  but  cosmocentric 
significance;  that  it  involves  therefore  endurance 
of  both  social  and  racial  stress ;  but  that,  in  each 
case,  it  does  so  under  its  own  conditions,  and  with 
its  own  limitations.  In  neither  case  is  the  burden 
shouldered  for  its  own  sake,  but  only  as  the  means 
whereby  to  lead  a  life  of  cosmocentric  significance  ; 
in  the  one  case,  as  a  means  of  significance  in  social 
conduct,  and  in  the  other,  as  a  means  of  signifi- 
cance in  racial  conduct.  Thus  we  have  seen  that 
true  action  in  regard  to  the  social  stress  is  that 
of  the  trustee.  The  life  of  competition  is,  indeed, 
adopted,  but  that  which  is  gained  as  a  result  of 
competitive  effort  is  only  a  fund  to  be  adminis- 
tered in  a  manner  that  is  the  very  negation 
of  self-seeking.      The   law   is    maintained;    but. 


102         THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

so  far  as  Society  is  concerned,  it  is  limited  by 
liberty. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  racial  stress.  The 
estate  of  life  is  entailed,  and  we  found  that  the 
law  enjoins  that  the  entail  should  not  be  selfishly 
broken  by  the  life-tenant,  and  yet  that  circum- 
stances are  imaginable  in  which  it  might  become 
a  legacy  of  evil,  and  that  an  unselfish  liberty  would 
then  take  the  place  of  law.  The  principle  may 
be  illustrated  by  a  strange  quotation  from  the 
Gospel  according  to  the  Egyptians.  The  passage 
is  referred  to  several  times  by  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria, and  runs  thus :  '*  When  Salome  asked 
how  long  death  would  prevail,  the  Lord  said: 
'  So  long  as  ye  women  bear  children.  For  I  have 
come  to  destroy  the  works  of  th^  female.'  And 
Salome  said  to  him:  'Did  I  therefore  well  in 
bearing  no  children?'  The  Lord  answered,  and 
said :  '  Eat  every  herb,  but  eat  not  that  which 
hath  bitterness.'"  The  last  words  raise  Salome's 
second  question  into  the  region  of  significance — 
of  conduct  that  is  right  or  wrong.  If  we  are  free 
to  eat  of  every  herb,  except  "that  which  hath 
bitterness,"  we  see  that  the  answer  implies  liberty 
as  well  as  law. 

This  conjunction  is  the  very  note  of  the  method 
of  Religious  Motive,  a  method  within  which, 
though  there  is  service,  yet  there  is  perfect  freedom : 
the  co-ordination  of  law  and  liberty,  a  co-ordination 
that,  within  the  confines  of  Reason,  many  have 
sought  and  none  have  found. 

Thus  we  see  that  both  Society  and  the  Race 
are  guarded — the  importance  of  each  is  recognised. 


METHOD   OF   RELIGIOUS   MOTIVE    103 

The  method  of  Religious  Motive,  falling  neither 
into  the  racial  immorality  and  social  a-morality  of 
Reason,  nor  into  the  racial  a-morality  and  social 
immorality  of  Instinct,  avoids  both  Scylla  and 
Charybdis. 

And  the  Individual :  what  of  him  ?  In  the 
"  Valley  of  Decision  "  he  bears  the  burden  of  both, 
and  duty  is  his  portion.  But  for  what  else  can 
he  ask  than  for  this  ?  He  does  not  measure  by 
a  geocentric  standard :  the  method  that  judges  by 
interest  is  far  removed  from  him.  He  measures 
by  quite  another  standard — the  standard  of  cosmo- 
centric  significance.  And,  in  the  method  of  Re- 
ligious Motive  he  finds  all  that  he  needs,  a 
machinery  that  is  perfect,  both  socially  and 
racially,  for  the  voluntary  and  lifelong  self-sacrifice 
of  a  rational  being;  the  only  one  that  is  capable 
of  furnishing  a  true  and  stable  civilisation. 

Geocentric  action  seeks  a  permanent  civilisation 
as  an  end,  but  cannot  attain  it.  Cosmocentric 
action  attains  it,  but  does  not  seek  it  as  an  end. 
A  permanent  civilisation  may  indeed  come,  but 
can  only  do  so  as  an  accident  of  self-sacrifice  that 
is  offered  upon  the  altars  of  the  Most  High. 


PART    II 

HISTORICAL  ILLUSTRATION  OF  THE 

PRINCIPLES  INDICATED  IN  THE 

PRECEDING  CHAPTERS 


CHAPTER    I 

ROME    AND    CHINA 

We  have  had  such  frequent  occasion  to  point 
out  that  history  is  a  resultant  from  which  it  is 
impossible  to  determine  either  the  direction  or 
magnitude  of  its  components  that,  at  first  sight, 
it  seems  absurd  that  we  should  turn  to  the  ex- 
amination of  the  records  of  past  or  present 
civilisations.  But  to  take  that  view  would  be 
to  misunderstand  our  present  purpose.  Although 
the  components  cannot  be  divined  from  a  given 
resultant,  the  reverse  process  is  perfectly  possible. 
If  the  magnitude  of  the  components  and  their 
directions  are  known,  then  their  effect  can  be 
traced  in  the  resultant.  It  is  this  reversed  course 
that  we  propose  to  take.  We  shall  assume  that 
in  the  preceding  pages  we  have  discovered  the 
components  of  history,  and  we  now  propose,  first 
to  identify  them  in  the  records  of  the  past,  and 
then  to  trace  their  effect.  Such  an  application 
of  the  general  principles  that  we  have  reached  is 
not  only  legitimate,  but  necessary,  for  it  furnishes 
the  only  possible  means  whereby  their  truth  can 
be  tested.  We  shall,  though  we  do  not  intend 
to  confine  ourselves  to  them  exclusively,  investi- 
gate two  great  examples  of  civilisation.  Each 
of  them  is  typical,   and   they   stand   in   striking 

107 


108         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

contrast  to  one  another.  The  first  will  exemplify 
the  preponderance  of  the  forces  that  we  have 
indicated  as  making  for  decay.  In  this  instance, 
we  must  be  able  to  show  that,  founded  on 
Reason,  it  was  a  geocentric  civilisation,  and  that 
its  religions  were  strictly  what  we  have  called 
ad  hoc,  that  they  were  subservient  to  the  State 
and  part  of  its  polity.  We  must  then  be  able 
to  show  the  process  of  revolt  against  the  two 
primary  stresses;  the  appearance  of  socialistic 
phenomena,  accompanied  by  the  assumption  of 
supreme  and  intrusive  power  by  the  State,  and 
the  appearance  and  prevalence  of  race-suicide, 
followed  by  the  gradual  collapse  of  the  huge 
structure. 

The  other  civilisation  will  exemplify  the  pre- 
ponderance of  the  forces  that  we  have  indicated 
as  making  for  permanence  and  continuous  growth. 
Here  we  must  be  able  to  demonstrate  that  the 
prevailing  religion  is  strictly  cosmocentric,  that  the 
resulting  civilisation  is  supra-rational  in  character ; 
that  is  to  say,  that  it  has  been,  and  is,  marked  by 
submission  to  each  of  the  two  primary  stresses. 
Socially,  we  must  find  a  stoical  endurance  of  the 
competition  of  life  carried  on  at  its  maximum 
of  severity.  The  resulting  social  conditions  may 
present  a  picture  that  is  repellent  to  ourselves, 
and  we  may  find  that  the  individual  life  is  of 
little  account.  We  shall  expect  to  see  that  the 
religious  sanctions  of  the  family  have  given  it 
so  great  an  importance  that  it  has  displaced  and 
well-nigh  obliterated  the  idea  of  the  State ;  that 
patriotism  is  almost  unknown,  and  that  the  State 


ROME   AND   CHINA  109 

only  exists  so  far  as  is  indispensable  to  the  safety 
of  the  family.  We  must  be  able  to  show  that, 
springing  from  the  religious  veneration  of  the 
family,  submission  to  the  racial  stress  is  not  less 
in  evidence.  We  may  find,  indeed,  that  this  is 
the  cause  of  the  harshness  of  the  social  conditions. 
If  such  a  civilisation  has  already  persisted  for  a 
long  time,  we  must  be  able  to  show  that  it  is 
shared  by  multitudes  innumerable.  We  must  be 
able  to  show  that,  however  ancient  it  may  be,  it 
is  still  in  the  ascendant,  and  that  its  zenith  is 
incalculable. 

If  we  find  that  the  former,  the  geocentric 
civilisation,  in  spite  of  the  social  splendour  of 
the  day  of  its  greatness,  has  gradually  collapsed 
in  disaster ;  and  that  the  latter,  the  cosmocentric 
civilisation,  in  spite  of  the  severity  of  its  social 
conditions,  is  still  flourishing  racially,  and  that, 
in  spite  of  its  antiquity,  it  is  still  at  the  dawn 
of  its  history,  then  we  may  justly  claim  that  our 
conclusions  have  been  tested  and  found  true. 

About  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  Era  the 
world  —  speaking  roughly  and  not  minutely  — 
possessed  two  great  civilisations.  Although  con- 
temporaries, each  was  little  more  than  cognisant 
of  the  fact  that  the  other  existed,  for  they  were 
so  widely  separated  geographically  that  they 
scarcely  came  into  contact  with  one  another. 
One  was  the  Roman  civilisation,  the  other  the 
Chinese.  Their  contact,  one  of  the  most  arrest- 
ing episodes  in  history,  is  recorded  by  Chinese 
historians.  They  relate  that  in  the  ninth  year  of 
Yau-hi  (a.d.  166)  an  embassy,  which  appears  to 


110         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

have  come  by  sea,  arrived  in  their  country  from 
Ta-thsin,  sent  by  An-thun,  or  Marcus  AureUus 
Antoninus.  Unfortunately  we  do  not  often  bear 
in  mind  the  fact  that  these  empires  were  not 
only  contemporaries,  but  that  the  Chinese  civilisa- 
tion arose  at  a  time  long  anterior  to  that  of  Rome, 
and  was  coeval  with  the  Pharaohs. 

The  one  race  has  disappeared:  the  other 
remains ;  and  not  only  remains,  but  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  know  it,  constitutes  the 
most  tremendous  factor  in  the  world  of  to-day. 
Why  has  the  one  disappeared  ?  And,  still  more, 
why  is  the  other,  the  most  ancient,  still  the 
youngest  of  the  nations  ? 

To  find  the  answers  to  these  questions  will 
be  the  main  object  of  our  historical  investiga- 
tions, although  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  other 
examples  that  are  not  less  instructive.  Why 
has  the  Athenian  vanished?  Why  is  the  Jew 
indestructible  ? 


CHAPTER  II 

RELIGION   UNDER  THE   ROMAN   EMPIRE 

At  the  time  of  the  assassination  of  Julius  Csesar 
the  Roman  Republic  had  attained  the  "  dissolute 
greatness"  that  marked  its  later  years,  but  it 
was  unequal  to  the  administration  of  the  whole 
Western  world,  and  already  the  omens  portended 
its  fall.  After  the  death  of  Cassar  the  State  was 
convulsed  for  thirteen  years  by  a  succession  of 
civil  wars,  and  at  the  end  of  that  period,  Augustus, 
the  first  and  greatest  of  the  emperors,  was  supreme 
and  his  authority  unquestioned.  ''  He  knitted 
together  the  Roman  world,^  east  and  west,  into 
one  great  organisation,  of  which  the  emperor  stood 
as  the  supreme  head.  He  set  his  legions  upon 
the  distant  frontiers,  and  their  swords  formed  a 
wall  of  steel  within  which  commerce  and  peace 
might  flourish.  The  security  was  not  perpetual, 
yet  it  lasted  for  four  centuries,  and  saved  ancient 
civilisation  from  destruction.  .  .  .  The  seeds  of 
degeneration  and  decay  had  been  planted  in  the 
days  of  the  Republic,  and  would  have  come  to 
maturity  far  sooner  if  there  had  been  no  Augustus 
and  no  empire.  Augustus  started  the  Roman 
world  on  a  new  career." 

1  Augustus  Ccesar  and  the  Organisation  of  the  Empire  of  Rome,  pp. 

364  et  seq.    By  John  B.  Firth,  B.A.     G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1903. 

Ill 


112         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

The  history  of  the  temporary  renascence  that 
was  achieved  by  Augustus,  and  of  the  fate  that 
overtook  it,  is  most  instructive  for  our  present 
purpose,  for  it  shows  us  the  deliberate  and  con- 
scious effort  of  a  man  of  genius,  ruling  the  world, 
not  only  to  arrest  the  decadence,  but  to  establish 
a  permanent  civilisation.  The  magnitude  of  the 
effort  has  been  the  marvel  of  all  succeeding  ages, 
but  none  the  less,  it  was  presently  followed  by  the 
tragedy  of  utter  decay. 

The  commanding  philosophy  of  the  age — that 
of  the  Stoic — was  essentially  determinist  and  cir- 
cumscribed by  pure  Reason.  Augustus  sought 
to  pass  beyond  it,  and  in  his  reforms  the  rehabili- 
tation of  religious  belief  occupied  the  first  place. 
"  Throughout  his  reign  he  was  always  ready  to 
head  a  subscription  list  for  the  repair  of  an  ancient 
fane.  *  Templorum  positor,  templorum  sancte  re- 
postor.'  Thus  Ovid  addresses  him  in  the  Fasti 
as  the  founder  of  new  shrines,  and  the  restorer  of 
the  old,  not  in  Rome  alone,  but  throughout  Italy 
and  the  provinces,  ...  In  12  B.C.  ...  he  himself 
assumed  the  Pontificate,  and  became  the  active 
head  both  of  Church  and  State.  In  all  matters 
connected  with  religion  there  was  no  one  more 
conservative  or  more  national  than  he.  While 
tolerating  the  alien  cults  and  new-fangled  super- 
stitions that  had  invaded  Rome,  he  reserved  his 
most  liberal  patronage  for  what  was  venerable 
and  of  native  growth.  .  .  .  He  increased  the 
number  of  the  Sacred  Colleges,  added  to  their 
dignities,  swelled  their  endowments,  and  bestowed 
marks  of  special  favour  upon  the  Vestal  Virgins. 


RELIGION   IN   ROME  113 

Ancient  priestly  foundations  and  ceremonies  which 
had  fallen  upon  evil  days,  such  as  the  Augury 
of  the  Public  Welfare,  the  Priesthood  of  Jupiter, 
the  Festival  of  the  Lupercalia,  and  the  Secular 
and  Compitalician  Games,  he  refounded  and  re- 
organised. He  restored  the  worship  of  the  Lares, 
the  minor  deities  of  the  street  and  the  home,  by 
raising  three  hundred  little  shrines  at  the  cross- 
ways  and  street  corners  of  the  city,  and  by  ordering 
that  twice  a  year,  in  spring  and  in  summer,  their 
modest  altars  should  be  adorned  with  flowers. 
Due  honour  to  the  gods,  both  great  and  small, 
such  was  the  cardinal  principle  of  Augustus  in 
dealing  with  religion. 

"And  he  had  his  reward,  for  the  religion  of 
Rome  struck  new  roots  deep  into  the  life  of  the 
Roman  people.  It  is  one  of  the  strangest  facts  in 
history  that  just  at  the  period  when  there  was  born 
in  Palestine  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  which 
was  destined  to  destroy  paganism,  there  should  have 
taken  place  so  marked  a  revival  of  the  old  religion. 
Its  genuineness  is  beyond  argument.  We  have 
only  to  take  note  of  the  number  of  ruined  temples, 
of  the  decay  of  the  sacerdotal  colleges,  of  the 
contemptuous  and  sceptical  attitude  of  Cicero  to- 
wards the  State  religion,  to  see  how  low  it  had  fallen 
in  the  last  days  of  the  Republic.  .  .  .  But  in  the 
early  days  of  the  empire  a  profound  change  takes 
place.  The  gods  enjoy  a  new  lease  of  life.  Men 
not  only  worship,  they  almost  believe."  ^  "  In  the 
Julian  Forum  stood  the  stately  temple  to  Venus 
Genetrix  .  .  .  completed  by  Augustus  after  Caesar's 

^  Firth,  ojp.  cit.j  pp.  206  et  seq. 

H 


114  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

death.  In  the  new  Forum  there  arose  the  magni- 
ficent temple  to  Mars  the  Avenger,  vowed  by 
Augustus  himself  during  the  battle  of  Philippi, 
and  regarded  by  him  with  peculiar  veneration.  .  .  . 
He  erected  the  temple  to  Thundering  Jupiter 
on  the  Capitol  .  .  .  and  the  great  temple  of 
Apollo  on  the  Palatine."  ^  "  Augustus  encouraged 
others  to  follow  his  example.  .  .  .  Marcus  Philippus 
his  kinsman  raised  a  temple  to  Hercules,  Lucius 
Cornuficius  to  Diana,  and  Munatius  Plancus  to 
Saturn.  .  .  .  Agrippa  raised  the  glorious  Pantheon ; 
and  near  at  hand  was  the  temple  of  Poseidon, 
founded  to  commemorate  his  many  naval  vic- 
tories." ^  "  Augustus  eventually  recognised  that 
the  identification  of  himself  with  Rome  and  the 
empire  for  purposes  of  public  worship,  the  close 
union,  that  is  to  say,  of  Church  and  State,  was 
a  source  of  incalculable  strength  to  the  Principate. 
He  would  have  failed  in  statesmanship,  therefore, 
had  he  not  encouraged  this  idea  and  given  it 
definite  shape."  ^ 

We  cannot  suppose  that  this  last  consideration 
was  lost  upon  the  astute  and  inscrutable  Augustus, 
and  we  know  that  it  sank  deeply  into  the  minds 
of  his  successors.  The  question  therefore  arises : 
"  Are  we  here  in  the  presence  of  religious  systems 
that  essentially  subserved  the  State,  or  of  systems 
that  were  essentially  cosmocentric  ? "  The  answer 
to  this  question  is  vital  to  our  argument,  for,  as 
we  have  pointed  out  (page  75),  in  speaking  of  the 
justification  of  self-sacrifice  in  a  rational  being,  "  a 

^  Firth,  0]).  cit.,  p.  202.  ^  Ibid.,  pp.  202  et  seq. 

=»  Ibid.,  p.  213. 


RELIGION    IN   ROME  115 

rule  of  conduct  that  takes  temporal  things  as  an 
end  will  not  suffice ;  a  religion  ad  hoc  will  not 
serve."  If  these  religions  are  cosmocentric  in 
purpose,  and  yet  tlie  civilisation  that  rested  upon 
them  fails  for  lack  of  racial  self-sacrifice,  then  our 
arguments  are  disproved.  And  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  these  religions  are  geocentric  in  purpose, 
then  it  will  be  seen  that  racial  failure  is  what 
we  have  to  expect.  The  evidence,  however,  that 
they  are  geocentric,  and  what  we  have  called  ad 
hoc,  is  conclusive.  Dr.  W.  R.  Inge's  fascinating 
work  1  deals  chiefly  with  the  first  century  a.d.,  and 
his  opening  sentence  tells  us  that  "the  national 
religion  of  the  Roman  people  was  a  part  of  the 
polity  of  the  Republic,"  and  (page  7)  that  *'  Piety 
towards  the  gods  and  obedience  to  the  magis- 
trates were  duties  of  the  same  kind."  Gibbon 
is  not  less  outspoken.  "  The  office  of  Supreme 
Pontiff  was  constantly  exercised  by  the  emperors 
themselves.  They  knew  and  valued  the  advan- 
tages of  religion  as  it  is  connected  with  civil 
government.  .  .  .  They  managed  the  arts  of 
divination  as  a  convenient  instrument  of  policy ; 
and  they  respected,  as  the  firmest  bond  of  society, 
the  useful  persuasion  that,  either  in  this  or  a  future 
life,  the  crime  of  perjury  is  most  assuredly  punished 
by  the  avenging  gods."^  Even  Mithraism,  un- 
questionably the  noblest  of  the  imperial  religions, 
and  the  one  possessed  of  the  highest  ethical  value, 
was  entangled  in  political  meshes  no  less  than  any 
other. 

^  Society  in  Rome  under  the  Ccesars.    London,  John  Murray,  1888. 
^  Decline  and  Fallj  chap.  ii. 


116         THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

"  Mithra,"  says  Sir  Samuel  Dill,^  *'  was  ready 
to  shelter  the  idols  under  his  purer  faith.  The 
images  of  Jupiter  and  Venus,  of  Mars  and  Hecate, 
of  the  local  deities  of  Dacia  and  Upper  Germany, 
find  a  place  in  his  chapels  beside  the  antique 
symbols  of  the  Persian  faith." 

It  became  especially  the  religion  of  the  army. 
The  highest  of  the  State-recognised  religions  was 
to  be  found  where  there  was  the  most  need  for 
self-sacrifice,  and  whither  the  legions  spread, 
thither  they  carried  the  cult  of  Mithra. 

Indeed  the  Roman  civilisation  carried  the 
policy  of  encouraging  religion  as  an  instrument 
of  State  to  extraordinary  lengths.  Any  religion 
would  serve,  and  was  admitted,  on  the  one  con- 
dition that  its  gods  were  interested  in  the  main- 
tenance of  the  existing  civilisation,  and  subserved 
the  purposes  of  the  Roman  State.  Any  religion 
that  inspired  a  sense  of  obedience  to  the  State, 
and  that  regarded  temporality  as  an  end,  was 
welcome.  The  number  of  such  religions  in  the 
Roman  civilisation  was  enormous.  Isis  and  Serapis 
and  Osiris,  Cybele  and  ^sculapius,  foregathered 
with  the  gods  of  Rome;  and  the  Lybian,  the 
Olympian,  and  the  Capitoline  Jupiter  were  treated 
with  equal  reverence.  The  religious  situation  may 
be  most  fitly  summed  up  in  Gibbon's  famous 
apophthegm :  ^  "  The  various  modes  of  worship 
which  prevailed  in  the  Roman  world  were  all 
considered  by  the  people  as  equally  true ;  by  the 
philosopher  as  equally  false;   and  by  the  magis- 

^  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aureliiis,  p.  625. 
^  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  ii. 


RELIGION   IN   ROME  117 

trate  as  equally  useful.''  With  but  two  exceptions, 
all  the  religions  of  the  world  of  Rome  had  this 
in  common,  that  they  were  geocentric,  and  the 
outward  sign  of  this  character  was  that  every  one 
of  them  acknowledged  the  deified  emperor  as  a 
god  and  received  in  return  the  blessing  and  en- 
couragement of  the  State.  The  geocentric  char- 
acter of  the  recognised  religions  becomes  even 
more  obvious  when  we  study  the  policy  that  was 
pursued  towards  the  religions  whose  end  was  not 
to  be  found  within  the  borders  of  the  existing 
civilisation. 

Two  stood  aside,  and  not  for  them  was  the 
lauded  "  toleration  "  of  the  Roman  Empire.  One 
was  the  Jew,  treasuring  the  words  of  Isaiah  in  his 
heart,  and  looking  for  One  who,  born  of  his  blood, 
should  make  pallid  the  glories  of  Rome,  and  estab- 
lish a  kingdom  of  this  world  that  should  bring  the 
millennium  with  it.  His  faith  bound  him  in  scorn 
of  the  idolaters  without  the  pale,  and  held  him  to 
the  service  of  the  God  of  his  fathers.  The  other 
was  the  Christian,  esteeming  the  empires  of  this 
world  as  nothing,  finding  the  value  of  life  in  a  new 
birth  unto  righteousness,  and  welcoming  death  as 
the  entrance  into  the  kingdom  of  his  Redeemer — 
a  faith  that,  binding  him  in  love  to  his  neighbour, 
yet  held  him  in  a  service  that  knew  no  earthly  tie. 

To  the  monotheistic  Jew  the  worship  of  the 
emperor  was  blasphemy.  Refusing  to  join  in  it, 
he  had  no  part  in  the  Roman  Empire,  and  the 
refusal  was  odious  to  the  Roman  world.  *'The 
polite  Augustus,"  says  Gibbon,^  "  condescended  to 

^  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  xv. 


118  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

give  orders  that  sacrifices  should  be  offered  for 
his  prosperity  in  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem ;  while 
the  meanest  of  the  posterity  of  Abraham  who 
should  have  paid  the  same  homage  to  the  Jupiter 
of  the  Capitol,  would  have  been  an  object  of 
abhorrence  to  himself  and  to  his  brethren."  Cali- 
gula, who  ascended  the  throne  of  the  world  in  the 
year  a.d.  37,  and  reigned  for  four  years,  brought 
the  matter  to  a  head  by  attempting  to  place  his 
own  statue  in  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem.  The 
attempt  gave  rise,  throughout  all  Jewry,  to  such 
bitter  and  unanimous  hostility  that,  upon  the 
death  of  Caligula,  it  was  abandoned. 

Thirty-four  years  later,  during  the  reign  of 
Vespasian,  came  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by 
Titus,  an  event,  says  Dr.  Inge,^  "  that  was  perhaps 
the  most  murderous  of  Roman  victories."  To 
quote  an  old  author,  Echard  :  ^ 

'*  Titus  commanded  both  the  Temple  and  City 
to  be  entirely  raz'd,  by  a  Plow  being  brought  over 
it.  .  .  .  To  this  fatal  end  came  the  famous  city 
of  Jerusalem,  .  .  .  Never  any  Siege  in  the  World 
was  more  memorable,  the  Captives  amounting  to 
97,000,  and  those  who  perished  in  the  Siege  to 
1,000,000,  according  to  Josephus,'' 

Even  that  was  not  the  end  of  the  Jewish  hope, 
but  their  final  dispersion  was  not  long  deferred. 
Their  very  existence  was  an  offence  to  the  geo- 
centric spirit  of  Rome,  and  the  last  tragic  stand 
against  what  was  implied  by  the  Roman  imperiuvi 
followed  in  a.d.  134.     The  last  of  their  national 

^  Op.  cit.y  p.  51. 

2  Roman  History,  vol.  ii.  p.  204.     1713./J 


RELIGION    IN   ROME  119 

heroes  appeared  in  the  person  of  the  gallant 
Barchochebas.  He  was  girded  with  a  sword  by 
the  aged  Akiba,  the  last  of  the  prophets,  and  the 
chief  and  leader  of  the  extremest  anti-Christian 
Jews  at  the  end  of  the  first  century. 

Hadrian  entrusted  the  work  of  destruction  to 
Julius  Severus,  governor  of  Britain.  "And  tho' 
he  gained  the  victory  at  last,"  writes  E chard,  "  he 
would  not  have  chosen  many  Triumphs  at  the 
Purchase  of  so  much  Blood.  .  .  .  The  War  was 
concluded  in  two  years  time  with  .  .  .  the  Death 
of  580,000  Men  in  Battels  and  Skirmishes,  besides 
infinite  numbers  consum'd  by  Famines  and  Diseases, 
and  their  whole  Land  laid  waste,  which  almost 
prov'd  the  Extirpation  of  the  Jewish  Nation. 
Adrian  after  this  strange  desolation  banish'd  all 
Jews  out  of  Judaea,  and  by  pubhck  Decree  pro- 
hibited any  of  them  to  come  in  View  of  that 
Country,  or  so  much  as  to  look  towards  their 
Soil  or  City." 

Barchochebas  was  slain,  Akiba  was  put  to  a 
cruel  death,  and  a  shrine  of  Jupiter  was  erected 
among  the  ruins  of  the  Temple. 

The  fate  of  the  Christian  was  no  better  than 
that  of  the  Jew.  But  it  is  strange  to  find  how 
completely  the  view  that  religion  was  a  geocentric 
affair  had  become  ingrained  in  the  conceptions  of 
the  age.  Thus,  while  the  Jews  were  accused  of 
*'  tumult,"  the  Christians  were  charged  with 
"atheism."  Even  Gibbon  writes:^  "The  most 
pious  of  men  were  exposed  to  the  unjust  but 
dangerous   imputation   of    impiety.      Malice  and 

^  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  xvi. 


120         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

prejudice  concurred  in  representing  the  Christians 
as  a  society  of  atheists."  To  the  Christians,  that 
is  to  say,  this  world  was  an  instrument  and  not 
an  end ;  their  purpose  was  cosmocentric  and  their 
lives  given  to  the  service  of  the  Most  High.  To 
them  this  world  and  its  religions  were  incarnate 
in  the  deified  emperor,  and  in  him  they  saw  no 
less  than  Anti-Christ.  Thus  the  charge  hurled 
against  them  was  that  of  "  atheism."  The  Jewish 
hope  was,  indeed,  intolerable  to  the  empire,  but 
it  is  only  when  we  find  the  purely  cosmocentric 
charged  with  ''atheism"  that  we  become  wit- 
nesses of  the  real  and  essential  struggle — the  true 
antithesis  of  principle.  It  was  seen  that  the 
geocentric  life  and  the  cosmocentric  life  were 
mutually  exclusive,  and  the  vital  nature  of  the 
tremendous  issue  was  recognised  on  both  sides. 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  recount  the  history 
of  the  persecutions.  Not  once  nor  twice,  but 
again  and  again,  the  whole  might  of  the  Roman 
Empire  was  put  forth  in  efforts  to  exterminate 
Christianity.  The  edicts  went  forth  at  intervals 
from  the  time  of  Nero  to  that  of  Diocletian,  and 
throughout  the  world  horror  followed  upon  horror. 
To  the  Christians  the  magnitude  of  what  was  at 
stake  dwarfed  all  other  considerations,  and  the 
individual  life  became  of  no  account.  Death  was 
a  little  thing  compared  with  the  surrender  that 
was  confessed  by  burning  a  pinch  of  incense 
before  the  statue  of  the  emperor.  Tiberianus, 
the  governor  of  Palestine,  wrote  to  Trajan,  says 
Echard : 

"  That  he  was  wearied  out  in  executing  the 


RELIGION   IN  ROME  121 

Laws  against  the  Galilaeans,  who  crowded  to 
Execution  in  such  Multitudes,  that  he  was  at  a 
loss  how  to  proceed." 

Their  indifference  to  life  seems  to  have  caused 
the  greatest  astonishment.  Gibbon/  quoting  Ter- 
tullian  ad  Scapuli,  c,  5,  writes  thus  :  "  *  Unhappy- 
men  ! '  exclaimed  the  proconsul  Antoninus  to  the 
Christians  of  Asia,  *  unhappy  men !  if  you  are 
thus  weary  of  your  lives,  is  it  so  difficult  for  you 
to  find  ropes  and  precipices  ? '" 

The  only  reference  to  the  Christians  that  is 
made  by  Marcus  Aurelius  is  not  less  strange.  We 
quote  from  Long's  translation  of  his  Thoughts,  xi.  3  : 

"  What  a  soul  that  is  which  is  ready,  if  at  any 
moment  it  must  be  separated  from  the  body,  and 
ready  either  to  be  extinguished  or  dispersed,  or 
continue  to  exist;  but  so  this  readiness  comes 
from  a  man's  own  judgment,  not  from  mere 
obstinacy  as  with  the  Christians,  but  considerately 
and  with  dignity,  and  in  a  way  to  persuade 
another,  without  tragic  show." 

Impressive  indeed  is  the  mental  posture  of 
Marcus  Aurelius.  An  able  man — a  man  worthy 
of  the  wide  survey  provided  by  his  imperial  emi- 
nence— he  perceives  only  geocentric  reasons  for 
action,  and  yet  is  oppressed  by  a  perception  of 
the  need  of  unworldly  motive.  Thus,  while 
sitting  upon  the  throne  of  the  world,  the  note 
of  his  meditations  is  that  of  despair.  "  All  things 
are  the  same — familiar  in  experience,  and  ephemeral 
in  time,  and  worthless  in  the  matter."  ^ 

^  Decline  and  Fall,  chap.  xvi. 
2  Op.  cit.j  ix.  14. 


122  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

The  lapse  of  years  has  given  us  an  even  wider 
survey  than  that  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  We  see  that 
the  Western  world  was  woven  into  one  proud 
empire,  and  possessed  a  civilisation  that  knew 
no  rival.  We  see  also  the  triumph  of  Reason. 
The  civilisation  is  purely  geocentric,  the  empire 
is  an  end  in  itself,  and  the  cosmocentric  element 
in  religion  is  regarded  as  treason,  and  treason  as 
atheism. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  opportunity  of  testing 
the  worth  of  the  views  advanced  in  our  earlier 
chapters.  If  those  views  are  sound,  what  have 
we  to  expect  ?  What  else  than  the  exaltation 
of  Society,  followed  by  the  decay  of  the  Race, 
and  the  dissolution  of  the  civilisation  that  it  had 
created. 


CHAPTER  III 

SOCIETY    UNDER   THE   ROMAN   EMPIRE 

The  conditions  of  life  under  the  Emperors  of 
Rome  is  a  theme  that  has  occupied  the  pens  of 
some  of  the  most  able  men  that  have  arisen  in 
modern  times,  and  the  judgment  that  they  have 
formed  is  strangely  confused.  It  is  a  mixture  of 
admiration  and  disgust :  and  it  may  be  counted  as 
a  merit  to  the  present  outlook  upon  life  that  the 
sentiment  of  the  majority  of  these  judges  is  essen- 
tially one  of  disgust. 

The  confusion,  however,  is  to  a  very  large 
extent  removed  when  we  distinguish  between 
Society  and  the  Race.  The  racial  conditions 
excite  our  horror.  The  social  conditions — that  is, 
the  unqualified  and  unanimous  determination  to 
make  the  most  of  this  life — created  a  society  of 
unparalleled  magnificence.  Nothing  was  wanting : 
civilisation  was  consolidated  under  one  administra- 
tion, and  the  earth  was  swept  to  supply  slaves  and 
to  furnish  marbles  and  wealth.  The  ruthless  social 
splendour,  and  the  unrestrained  gratification  of  the 
senses  that  resulted,  produces  a  sense  of  stupe- 
faction in  the  modern  mind.  To  us,  many  of  the 
actors  seem  unbalanced.  When,  in  the  pages  of 
Tacitus  and  Suetonius,  we  read  the  record  of  the 
emperors  and   of  the  sinister  women  who  stand 

123 


124         THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

behind  them,  we  are  oppressed  by  the  feehng  that 
we  have  entered  a  pathological  museum.  Regard- 
ing them  from  the  standpoint  of  to-day,  we  seem 
to  be  contemplating  a  pre-arranged  series,  and  feel 
that,  although  the  objects  differ  from  one  another, 
yet  a  certain  sameness  pervades  the  whole.  The 
catalogue  introduces  us  to  a  number  of  different 
morbid  specimens  illustrating,  nearly  always,  the 
same  disease.  To  the  ordinary  reader  of  the 
ancient  historians  it  appears  that  a  majority  of  the 
characters  portrayed  were,  more  or  less,  persons  of 
unsound  mind,  and  that  they  ought  to  have  been 
placed  under  restraint.  In  modern  times  it  has 
been  seriously  maintained  that  the  curse  of  insanity 
ran  in  the  Claudian  blood.  But  what,  then,  of 
the  emperors,  not  less  unbridled,  who  were  not 
of  the  Claudian  line  ?  Frequently  the  emperors 
were  not  kin  to  one  another,  and  yet  the  same- 
ness persists.  On  the  other  hand,  where  the 
putative  relationship  is  most  close,  there  is,  some- 
times, the  greatest  contrast  in  character,  as  when  a 
Julia  is  born  to  Augustus,  a  Nero  to  Germanicus, 
or  the  refinement  of  Marcus  Aurelius  is  succeeded 
by  the  beastiality  of  Commodus.  To  regard  a 
majority  of  a  long  series  of  emperors,  and  a 
majority  of  those  who  surrounded  them,  as  insane, 
is  to  reach  a  conclusion  that,  on  the  face  of  it, 
is  improbable;  and  in  their  contemporaries  we 
find  no  trace  of  the  sense  of  having  been  in  the 
presence  of  the  pathological.  There  is  not  even 
any  evidence  that  they  were  unpopular  with  the 
commonalty  of  their  day.  The  question  of  the 
restoration  of  the  Republic  does  not  seem  to  have 


SOCIETY   IN   ROME  125 

been  popularly  mooted.  Sir  Samuel  Dill  ^  says : 
"  Suet.  Claud,  x.  ;  Calig.  Ix. ;  D.  Cass.  60,  i.— On 
the  assassination  of  Caligula,  the  Senate  debated 
the  question  of  abolishing  the  memory  of  the 
Caesars,  and  restoring  the  Republic ;  but  the  mob 
outside  the  Temple  of  the  Capitoline  Jupiter 
demanded  'one  ruler'  of  the  world."  And,^ 
speaking  of  such  a  monster  as  Nero,  "  It  is  very 
striking,  that,  in  the  records  of  his  reign,  the  most 
damning  accusation  against  him  is  that  he  dis- 
graced the  purple  by  exhibitions  on  the  stage." 
At  the  worst,  the  emperors  were  not  destroyed 
by  any  revolt  of  their  subjects  excited  by  general 
hostility,  although  they  frequently  suffered  private 
assassination  as  the  result  of  a  palace  intrigue.  It 
is  not  until  the  time  of  Heliogabalus,  some  two 
hundred  years  after  the  birth  of  Christianity,  that 
we  find  the  self-indulgence  of  the  emperors 
exciting  really  widespread  disgust.  Gradually  we 
reach  the  conclusion  that,  abnormal  as  they  and 
their  associates  appear  to  us,  they  were  normal  to 
the  age  in  which  they  lived.  We  are  contem- 
plating a  temper  of  mind  almost  inconceivable  to 
ourselves ;  to  exercise  restraint  was  to  waste  the 
fleeting  days;  gratification  of  the  senses  was  the 
aim  of  life. 

If  we  leave  the  emperors  and  their  satellites, 
and  successively  pass  in  review  the  lower  grades 
of  the  social  scale,  we  meet  persistently  with  the 
same  spirit.     Everywhere  we  encounter  the  work 

^  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius  (Macmillan,  1904),  in 
a  footnote  on  page  38. 
2  Op.  cit.,  p.  19. 


126  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

of  pure  Reason  ;  we  find  that  interest  is  dominant, 
and  that  carpe  diem  is  the  rule  of  life.    Many  of  the 
most  splendid  and  enduring  monuments  of  Roman 
art  and  architecture  are  theatres,  baths,  and  other 
municipal  structures  erected  for  the  delectation  of 
the   populace,  and  the  area  that  was  subject  to 
Rome  is  still   covered   by  ruins  that   attest  the 
spirit,  not  of  work,  but  of  play.     The  municipality 
supplants  the  family,  and  the  local  amphitheatre 
is  the  structure  that  survives.     *'  Men  looked  for 
their  happiness  to  their  city  rather  than  to  the 
family  or  to  the  State  .  .  .  and  the  buildings  and 
banquets  and  bright  festivals  on  which  so  much 
was  lavished,  were  enjoyed  by  all  citizens  alike, 
the  lowest  and  the  highest,  although  high  and  low 
had  sometimes  by  prescriptive  usage  an  unequal 
share  in  the   largesses.     The   free   enjoyment   of 
sumptuous  baths,  of  good  water  from  the  Atlas, 
the  Apennines,  or  the  Alban  Hills  ;   the  right  to 
sit  at  ease  with  one's  fellows  when  the  Pseudolus 
or  the  Adelphi  was  put  on  the  boards ;  the  pleasure 
of  strolling  in  the  shady  colonnades  of  the  forum 
or  the  market,  surrounded  by  brilliant  marbles  and 
frescoes,  with   fountains   shedding  their   coolness 
around ;  the  good  fellowship  which,  for  the  time, 
levelled   all   ranks,  in  many  a  simple  communal 
feast,  with  a  coin  or  two  distributed  at  the  end  to 
recall  or  heighten  the  pleasure ;    all  these  things 
tended  to  make  the  city  a  true  home,  to  some 
extent  almost  a  great  family  circle.  .  .  .  The  love 
of  amusement  grew  upon  the  Roman  character  as 
civilisation  developed  in  organisation  and  splendour, 
and  unfortunately  the  favourite  amusements  were 


SOCIETY   IN   ROME  127 

often  obscene  and  cruel.  The  calendar  of  the  time 
is  sufficiently  ominous.  The  number  of  days 
which  were  annually  given  up  to  games  and 
spectacles  at  Rome  rose  from  66  in  the  reign  of 
Augustus  to  135  in  the  reign  of  M.  Aurelius,  and 
to  175  or  more  in  the  fourth  century.  In  this 
reckoning,  no  account  is  taken  of  extraordinary 
festivals  on  special  occasions.  .  .  .  The  lubricity 
of  pantomime  and  the  slaughter  of  the  arena  were 
never  more  fiercely  and  keenly  enjoyed  than 
when  the  Germans  were  thundering  at  the  gates 
of  Treves  and  Carthage."  ^ 

If  we  turn  to  the  literature  of  the  age  we  find 
the  same  record.  We  may,  perhaps,  think  that 
it  would  be  unjust  to  accept  the  descriptions  of 
Juvenal,  Martial,  and  Petronius  as  pictures  of  the 
ordinary  conditions  of  life  among  the  well-to-do, 
and,  if  so,  let  us  judge  the  age  by  its  ideals  of 
goodness  and  not  by  its  moral  aberrations.  Let 
us  turn  to  the  better  aspect  and  to  such  moralists 
as  Quintilian,  Tacitus,  and  Pliny.  What  do  we 
discover?  We  see  that  Quintilian  (i.  2,  4,  8) 
finds  it  necessary  to  denounce  the  corruption  of 
youth  by  the  sight  of  their  fathers  toying  with 
mistresses  and  minions.  Tacitus  {£>e  Or.,  28) 
finds  it  necessary  to  preach  the  virtues  of  pure 
motherhood.  The  philosopher  Musonius  finds  it 
necessary  to  teach  that  ^  "  All  indulgence  outside 
the  sober  limits  of  wedlock  was  a  gross  animal 
degradation  of  human  dignity."  And  we  cannot 
suppose  that  the  moral  remarks  of  Cicero  were 

^  Sir  Samuel  Dill,  02?.  cit.,  pp.  232  et  seg. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  143. 


128  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

not  brilliant  to  his  contemporaries,  although  we 
find  them  the  dullest  of  platitudes.  Finding  that 
the  moralists  themselves  set  up  such  very  primitive 
ideals  as  these,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the  un- 
restrained pursuit  of  self-indulgence  in  the  society 
that  surrounded  them  ?  Just  as  we  reached  the 
conclusion  that  the  monstrous  emperors  were  not 
really  insane,  so  we  may  infer  that  the  amazing 
pictures  drawn  by  Juvenal,  Martial,  and  Petronius 
are  not  really  preposterous.  We  shall  cease  to 
marvel  at  the  indictment  of  St.  Paul  (Rom.  i.  24 
et  seq,)  or  the  denunciations  of  the  Son  of  Thunder 
(Rev.  xvii.  and  xviii.). 

When  we  pass  on  to  inquire  into  the  conditions 
that  prevailed  in  the  relatively  poorer  classes,  we 
find  that  the  same  tendency  shows  itself  in 
measures  taken  with  the  object  of  eliminating 
competition.  Socialism  steadily  grew  within  the 
empire,  and  had  become  a  highly  developed  system 
when  Diocletian  divested  himself  of  the  purple 
in  A.D.  305.  The  movement  seems  to  have  been 
widespread:  in  Acts  xix.  23-41,  for  example,  we 
find,  at  Ephesus,  an  organised  craft  with  an  ac- 
cepted leader,  Demetrius,  and  a  "  town  clerk,"  who 
admits  that  there  are  certain  causes  in  which  the 
organised  craft  may  take  action.  It  appears  to 
have  begun  with  a  blend  of  what,  just  at  present, 
is  called  syndicalism,  or  trades  unionism,  with 
socialism. 

Professor  Flinders  Petrie,  D.C.L.,  LL.D., 
F.R.S.,  refers  to  these  facts  in  a  small  book  that  he 
published  with  the  title  Janus  in  Modern  Life  ^ — 

1  London,  A.  Constable  &  Co.,  Limited,  1907. 


SOCIETY   IN   ROME  129 

a  book  that  we  have  found  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting and  most  wholly  admirable  works  that  have 
been  written  in  recent  years.  "  About  a.d.  230," 
he  writes  (page  30),  "  all  trades  were  organised  into 
corporations  or  trades  unions,  recognised  by  the 
Government,  instead  of  being  only  private  societies 
as  before.  This  seems  to  have  been  a  compulsory 
unionism;  but  there  was  some  difference  in  class 
between  this  unionism  and  our  own.  In  Rome 
the  trades  were  in  the  hands  of  smaller  men,  and 
not  of  large  firms  and  companies  as  much  as  with 
us ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  mere  mechanic 
was  usually  a  slave,  this  slave  labour  being  econo- 
mically the  equivalent  of  machinery  in  our  time. 
Hence  the  Roman  trades  unions  were  small  em- 
ployers of  the  status  of  our  plumbers  or  up- 
holsterers, more  than,  as  with  us,  a  large  mass 
of  crude  labour  organised  against  all  capital.  They 
were  trade  unions,  rather  than  unions  of  mechanics 
as  against  managers.  The  compulsory  entry  of  all 
the  master  employers  would  no  doubt  be  a  step  very 
welcome  to  modern  unionism,  and  the  compulsory 
extension  of  it  so  as  to  leave  no  free  labour  would 
be  an  ideal  condition,  while  picketing  would  be 
quite  superseded  by  legal  compulsion  to  join  the 
union.  The  differences,  therefore,  were  such  as 
our  trades  unions  would  desire  and  aim  at  in  the 
future;  in  short,  unionism  by  a.d.  230  was  more 
developed  than  it  is  at  present  with  us." 

Thus  competition  between  traders  was  elimi- 
nated. But  this  result  was  not  all  that  was 
achieved.  If  on  the  one  hand  the  State,  by  the 
abolition  of  free  labour,  granted  a  monopoly  to  the 


130  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

union,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  it  exacted  a  considera- 
tion. Society,  in  return,  required  that  a  certain 
amount  of  work  should  be  done  either  gratis  or 
below  cost.  This  work  was  to  be  done  for  the 
poor,  all  profits  were  to  be  earned  from  wealth : 
thus  the  competitive  stress  was  relieved  both  to 
those  within  the  union  and  to  those  without  it. 

'*  Early  in  the  third  century,  the  grain  importers 
and  the  bakers,  being  two  trades  that  touched  the 
proletariat  most  closely,  were  organised  as  mono- 
polist unions  on  condition  that  they  should  do 
a  certain  amount  of  work  for  the  poor  at  a  nominal 
rate.  Each  member  of  the  union  was  assessed  by 
his  union "  (we  are  quoting  Professor  Flinders 
Petrie  again ^)  "on  the  basis  of  both  his  capital  and 
his  trade  returns,  and  he  had  to  do  so  much  of 
the  cheap  work  in  proportion.  Hence  the  wealth 
of  each  firm  determined  the  amount  of  proletariat 
taxation.  .  .  .  Hence  to  each  person  the  aim  was 
to  work  with  the  smallest  amount  of  capital,  and 
to  remove  from  the  business  all  spare  capital  and 
invest  it  elsewhere.  This  naturally  resulted  in 
business  being  badly  worked.  The  difficulty  was 
met  by  the  law  that  all  capital  once  in  the  business 
could  never  be  withdrawn;  and  all  profits, — and 
later,  all  acquired  wealth — should  be  kept  in  the 
business,  so  that  the  richer  firms  should  do  their 
full  share  of  proletariat  service.  The  results  of 
these  logical  developments  of  unionism  and  help 
to  the  proletariat  were  that  many  withdrew  alto- 
gether from  unions,  retiring  upon  a  small  com- 
petence rather  than  live  under  such  a  burden,  and 

^  Op.  city  pp.  32  et  seq. 


SOCIETY  IN   ROME  131 

that  there  was  a  general  decline  of  commerce  and 
industry." 

"  Property  having  thus  become  the  gauge  of 
responsibility  in  the  union,  the  only  way  to  prevent 
desertions  was  to  declare  that  the  property  was 
attached  to  the  union  permanently,  and  whosoever 
acquired  it  did  so  under  the  implied  covenant  of 
supplying  the  share  of  union  work  out  of  it.  The 
result  of  this  law  was  that  no  one  with  capital 
would  join  a  trade  union,  as  their  whole  property 
became  attached  to  the  union ;  and  poor  persons 
were  not  desired  on  unions,  as  they  could  not  take 
up  a  share  of  the  proletariat  service.  This  con- 
dition was  met  by  the  law  forcibly  enrolling 
capitalists  in  the  unions,  and  demanding  their 
personal  service  as  well  as  the  use  of  their  capital." 

"By  A.D.  270  Aurelian  had  made  unionism 
compulsory  for  life,  so  as  to  prevent  the  able  men 
from  withdrawing  to  better  themselves  by  free 
work  individually.  He  also  gave  a  wine  dole,  and 
bread  in  place  of  corn  to  save  the  wastrel  the 
trouble  of  baking.  In  the  fourth  century  every 
member,  and  all  his  sons,  and  all  his  property, 
belonged  inalienably  to  the  trades  union.  By  a.d. 
369  all  property,  however  acquired,  belonged  to 
the  union.  Yet  still  men  would  leave  all  that 
they  had  to  get  out  of  the  hateful  bondage,  and  so 
the  unpopular  trades — such  as  the  money ers  in  a.d. 
380  and  the  bakers  in  a.d.  408 — were  recruited  by 
requiring  that  everyone  who  married  the  daughter 
of  a  unionist  must  join  his  father-in-law's  business. 
And  thus  '  the  empire  was  an  immense  gaol  where 
all  worked  not  according  to  taste  but  by  force,'  as 


132         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Waltzing  remarks  in  his  great  work,  Corporations 
Professionnelles,  where  the  foregoing  facts  are 
stated." 

The  system  seems  to  have  been  completed  by 
what  Professor  Flinders  Petrie^  calls  "the  vast 
socialist  decree  of  Diocletian,  regulating  all  prices 
and  wages  throughout  the  empire.  A  maximum 
value  was  fixed  for  every  kind  of  food — ^grain, 
wine,  oil,  meat,  fish,  vegetables,  and  fruit.  .  .  . 
Meanwhile  the  wages  of  labourers,  of  artisans,  and 
of  professions  were  all  equally  regulated,  so  that 
the  best  men  could  never  have  their  superior 
ability  rewarded.  The  prices  of  skins  and  leather, 
of  all  clothing,  and  of  jewellery  were  likewise 
defined." 

We  need  not  dwell  upon  the  fact  that,  for  the 
pauper  class,  not  only  were  free  doles  of  corn  pro- 
vided— a  political  device  that  is  not  to  be  dignified 
by  the  honourable  name  of  charity — but  also  the 
means  of  passing  idle  days  in  the  excitement  of 
the  horse-races  in  the  Great  Circus.  In  every  class 
we  have  found  the  exaltation  of  Society,  and,  in 
the  words  of  Dr.  Inge,^  "  We  may  grant,  probably 
we  should  grant,  that  the  Roman  understood  the 
art  of  living  better  than  we  understand  it ;  that  he 
knew  better  than  we  how  to  make  the  most  of  all 
the  pleasures  under  the  sun,  from  the  noblest  art 
to  the  vilest  indulgences." 

History,  showing  us  a  population  among  whom 
the  non-competitive  system  was  maintained  by 
any  and  every  contrivance,  reveals  a  leisured 
people,   and    corroborates   the    testimony  of   the 

1  Op.  cit,  p.  37.  2  Q^^  cn^^  ^  276. 


SOCIETY  IN  ROME  133 

numberless  ruins  of  baths  and  amphitheatres. 
Ease,  it  is  true,  was  purchased  by  the  loss  of 
liberty,  and  it  was  found  that  the  hand  of  the  State 
was  laid  ever  more  and  more  heavily  upon  every 
man.  But  no  mundane  consideration — not  the 
loss  of  liberty  itself — could  bring  men  back  to  a 
life  of  competition.  The  footsteps  all  lead  one 
way  ;  there  is  no  sign  of  returning  to  the  hard  con- 
ditions of  rivalry.  But  the  reader  of  these  pages 
will  not  be  surprised  by  the  fact  that  the  great 
Roman  machine  provided  a  socialistic  existence 
for  the  mass  of  the  people.  Ease  was  obtained  for 
every  class.  Neither  before  nor  since  has  pure 
Reason  been  so  greatly  in  the  ascendant,  never  has 
the  kingdom  of  this  world  been  so  splendid. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  FAMILY  AND  THE  RACE  UNDER  THE 
ROMAN  EMPIRE 

Leaving  our  review  of  the  character  of  Society 
under  the  Roman  Empire,  we  find,  before  we  can 
understand  the  consideration  of  the  position  of  the 
Race,  that  the  family,  as  the  nexus  between  the 
two,  calls  for  notice.  We  are  apt  to  regard  the 
family  as  we  know  it  as  a  part  of  the  natural  order 
of  things ;  and  at  first  it  is  not  easy  to  recognise 
that  it  may  be  based  upon  other  principles  than 
those  that  we  know  so  well.  In  saying  this  we 
are  only  referring  to  the  monogamous  family : 
neither  the  polyandrous  nor  the  polygamous 
household  merits  the  name  of  "  family " ;  and 
they  have  no  bearing  upon  the  matter  before 
us.  Two  forms  of  the  monogamous  family  are 
recognised  to-day,  one  being  the  cognatic  family, 
and  the  other  the  agnatic.  The  distinction  is 
of  great  importance.  The  cognatic  form  of  the 
family  prevails  among  ourselves  and  is  well  under- 
stood. Seeing,  however,  that  the  agnatic  form  of 
the  family  has  been  in  force  during  the  earlier 
periods  of  Roman  history  and  throughout  the 
whole  of  Chinese  history,  disappearing  in  the  one 
and  persisting  in  the  other,  some  description  of  it 
becomes  necessary. 

134 


THE   FAMILY  IN   ROME  135 

Sir  Henry  Maine,  in  his  work  on  Ancient  Law,^ 
says,  "  The  old  Roman  Law  established  ...  a 
fundamental  distinction  between  '  agnatic '  and 
*  cognatic '  relationship — that  is,  between  the  family 
considered  as  based  upon  common  subjection  to 
patriarchal  authority,  and  the  family  considered  (in 
conformity  with  modern  ideas)  as  united  through 
the  mere  fact  of  a  common  descent." 

"Cognates,  then,^  are  all  those  persons  who 
can  trace  their  blood  to  a  single  ancestor  and  an- 
cestress ;  or  if  we  take  the  strict  technical  meaning 
of  the  word  in  Roman  Law,  they  are  all  those  who 
trace  their  blood  to  the  legitimate  marriage  of  a 
common  pair.  But  who  are  the  Agnates  ?  In  the 
first  place,  they  are  all  the  cognates  who  trace  their 
connection  exclusively  through  males ;  .  .  .  all  who 
remain  after  the  descendants  of  women  have  been 
excluded  are  Agnates,  and  their  connection  to- 
gether is  Agnatic  Relationship.  .  .  .  Mulier  est 
finis  familice,  .  .  .  None  of  the  descendants  of  a 
female  are  included  in  the  primitive  notion  of 
family  relationship." 

"  If  the  system  of  archaic  law  at  which  we  are 
looking  be  one  which  admits  adoption,  we  must 
add  to  the  Agnates  thus  obtained  all  persons,  male 
or  female,  who  have  been  brought  into  the  family 
by  the  artificial  extension  of  its  boundaries.  But 
the  descendants  of  such  persons  will  only  be 
Agnates  if  they  satisfy  the  conditions  which  have 
just  been  described.  .  .  .  We  may  suspect  that 
it"  {ix.  agnatic   relationship)    "would  have   per- 

1  Chap.  iii.  p.  59 ;  9th  ed.,  John  Murray,  1883. 

2  Ojp.  cit,  chap.  V.  pp.  147  et  seq. 


136         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

petuated  itself  even  more  than  it  has  in  modern 
European  jurisprudence  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
vast  influence  of  the  later  Roman  Law  on  modern 
thought." 

Thus  the  essential  distinction  of  agnatic  rela- 
tionship is  to  be  found  in  the  understanding  that, 
on  marriage,  a  woman  passes  exclusively  into  the 
family  of  her  husband,  and  ceases  to  be  counted  as 
a  member  of  the  family  from  which  she  sprang. 
The  resulting  contrast  between  cognation,  the 
form  of  the  family  among  white  men,  and  agna- 
tion, the  form  of  the  family  among  yellow  men,  is 
indeed  a  singular  one.  In  the  cognatic  family  it 
is  a  matter  of  extreme  difficulty  for  a  man  to  trace 
his  origin  for  more  than  a  very  few  generations ; 
he  has  to  take  into  account  four  grandparents,  eight 
great-grandparents,  and  so  on.  Very  soon  he  is 
lost  in  a  fog  of  relationships,  and  a  prolonged 
tradition  of  family  descent  is  almost  impossible. 
Practically  he  only  recognises  contemporaries  who 
are  immediately  consanguineous  with  him.  Thus 
the  outlook  of  the  cognatic  family  is  horizontal ;  it 
is  essentially  a  recognition  of  consanguinity  among 
the  living,  and  shows  us  the  family  in  its  contact 
with  Society. 

In  the  agnatic  family,  on  the  contrary,  descent- 
is  absolutely  direct,  and  becomes  a  matter  of  the 
utmost  simplicity,  for  it  is  evident  that  it  can  only 
be  traced  from  father  to  son,  or  from  son  to  father, 
as  in  the  genealogies  given  in  the  Gospels  of  St. 
Matthew  and  St.  Luke.  In  the  agnatic  family  the 
outlook  is  vertical ;  it  is  a  recognition  of  the  con- 
tinuity of  consanguinity  between  the  generations 


THE   FAMILY   IN   ROME  137 

of  the  past  and  those  that  are  to  come,  and  shows 
us  the  family  in  its  contact  with  the  Race. 

The  Roman  world  started  with  all  the  racial 
advantages  of  the  agnatic  system  of  relationship. 
The  ancient  and  honourable  forms  of  marriage 
known  as  confarreation  and  coemption  are  clearly 
of  that  character.  The  first  of  them,  co7ifa?Teatio, 
was  the  more  solemn,  and  was  the  only  marriage 
of  a  distinctly  religious  kind.  The  second,  coenvptio, 
was  the  highest  form  of  purely  civil  marriage.  In 
both  of  them,  the  wife  left  her  own  family,  and 
passed  under  the  power,  the  manus,  of  her  husband ; 
her  property  became  his,  and,  being  included 
among  those  who  came  under  his  patria  potestas, 
her  legal  position  was  that  of  a  daughter.  There 
was  also  a  third,  a  lower,  form  of  civil  marriage 
known  as  usus — a  continuous  cohabitation  in  the 
husband's  house  for  one  year,  from  which  the  in- 
tention to  enter  into  a  contract  of  marriage  was 
inferred.  This  lower  form  of  marriage  was  also  of 
an  agnatic  character ;  the  woman  passed  under  the 
patria  potestas  of  her  husband. 

For  our  present  purpose  the  point  that  is 
interesting  is  the  degradation  in  these  forms  of 
marriage  that  took  place  in  the  society  that  we 
<were  considering  in  the  last  chapter.  The  causes 
that,  as  we  then  saw,  led  to  the  revolt  against  the 
social  stress,  and  that,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
led  to  revolt  against  the  racial  stress,  rendered 
these  contracts  meaningless  and  intolerable.  A 
steady  process  of  relaxation  took  place,  and,  to 
render  them  acceptable  at  all,  their  conditions 
were  made  less  and  less  exacting.     Confarreation 


138         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

and  coemption  had  almost  died  out  by  the  close 
of  the  Republic,  and  under  the  Empire,  in  the 
most  splendid  period  of  Roman  society,  usus 
alone  remained.  Even  that  persisted  in  a  de- 
based form :  the  wife  absented  herself  for  three 
nights  in  the  year  from  her  husband's  house,  and 
the  legal  effect  of  this  expedient  was  that  she 
never  passed  into  the  power  of  her  husband,  her 
property  never  became  his,  her  rights  remained 
unimpaired,  and  this  form  of  marriage,  scarcely 
distinguishable  from  concubinage,  was  almost  uni- 
versally adopted.  "  Most  marriages,"  says  Dr.  Inge 
(op.  cit,)^  •*  were  now  mere  civil  contracts  dissoluble 
at  pleasure."  "  It  has  been  pointed  out,"  he  con- 
tinues (p.  181),  "by  more  than  one  moralist  that 
in  times  of  national  corruption  the  women  are 
generally  even  more  vicious  than  the  men.  It 
was  so  at  Rome.  .  .  .  The  mere  fact  that  we  find 
such  expressions  as  '  cuius  castitas  pro  exemplo 
habita  est'  speaks  volumes  for  the  corruption  of 
Society.  But  on  this  subject  we  need  not  here 
dwell.  It  is  only  necessary  to  mention  it  in  order 
to  explain  that  strange  phenomenon  of  Roman  life, 
the  unexampled  frequency  of  divorce.  Divorce 
was  resolved  upon  on  the  slightest  pretext." 

But  this  was  not  all.  Reason  stopped  at  no 
halfway  house.  Society  might  make  the  bonds 
of  the  married  state  as  fragile  as  possible,  but  that 
did  not  meet  the  demands  of  Reason.  The  aver- 
sion was  from  matrimony  itself.  **  The  large 
majority  of  men  never  married  at  all."  ^ 

After  the  freedom  from  matrimonial  contract 

1  Dr.  Inge,  op.  cit.,  p.  182. 


THE    RACE   IN   ROME  189 

that  prevailed  during  the  early  period  of  the  Em- 
pire, *'the  dignity  of  marriage,"  says  Gibbon,^ 
**was  restored  by  the  Christians."  He  is  speaking 
of  the  times  of  Justinian  :  unhappily,  the  influence 
of  earlier  conditions  was  still  too  great  to  permit 
a  reversion  to  the  rigid  line  of  agnation,  and  the 
cognatic  form  of  the  family  must  be  regarded  as  a 
legacy  of  evil  that  the  modern  vv^orld  has  inherited 
from  the  later  Roman  jurisprudence. 

Our  thoughts  pass  naturally  from  the  posi- 
tion of  the  family  to  that  of  the  Race.  Here 
also  Reason  was  dominant.  But  the  situation 
is  rendered  one  of  absorbing  interest  by  the 
gigantic  and  unparalleled  efforts  that  were  made 
by  Augustus  to  arrest  and  reverse  the  revolt 
against  the  racial  stress.  Every  geocentric  con- 
sideration was  in  his  favour.  The  grandeur  of 
the  traditions  of  Rome  appealed  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  his  people,  and  the  splendour  of  Society 
called  for  their  patriotism.  He  devoted  himself 
to  the  realisation  of  his  hopes  to  preserve  the  Race, 
and  we  find  the  explanation  of  his  attempts  to  re- 
suscitate religious  fervour  in  his  eflbrt  to  achieve 
this  end.  The  element  of  tragedy  is  imported  into 
his  work  by  the  fact  that  it  was  foredoomed  to 
failure.  Ad  hoc  religion  was  inherently  unable  to 
compass  a  cosmocentric  purpose. 

The  position  that  faced  Augustus  was  an  illus- 
tration of  the  manner  in  which  a  high  civilisation 
and  the  ascendancy  of  Society  can  be  attained  by 
the  sacrifice  of  the  Race,  purchased,  as  it  were,  by 
the  expenditure  of  the  racial  capital.     Dr.  Inge,^ 

^  0;p.  cit.j  chap.  xliv.  ^  Op.  city  p.  69. 


140         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

referring  to  the  prevalence  of  infanticide  in  the 
first  century  a.d.,  writes  as  follows : 

**The  destruction  of  a  new-born  infant  was, 
according  to  some  authorities,  forbidden  by  law, 
but  it  was  certainly  common.^  Parents,  whose 
sense  of  pity  prevented  them  from  killing  an  infant, 
often  exposed  it,  in  which  case  it  either  died  of 
neglect  or  was  reared  as  a  slave  or  a  prostitute  by 
persons  who  made  a  trade  of  the  practice.  The 
habit  of  *  limiting  the  number  of  children,'  as 
Tacitus  euphemistically  calls  it,  was  condemned 
on  political  grounds  as  tending  to  diminish  popula- 
tion at  a  time  when  the  human  harvest  was  bad ; 
but  we  do  not  find  the  moral  condemnation  which 
modern  society  passes  on  the  practice,  a  judgment 
which  is  due  to  a  new  conception  of  the  guilt  of 
homicide,  introduced  by  Christianity.  The  practice 
of  infanticide  was  certainly  highly  mischievous  at 
Rome  in  this  period,  and  contributed  not  a  little  to 
the  gradual  extinction  of  the  Roman  race." 

"Abortion,"  he  says  [loc,  cit,),  "was  not  dis- 
couraged by  law,  and  was  very  extensively 
practised.  The  art  was  a  regular  part  of  the 
physician's  practice,  and  was  apparently  well 
understood.^  We  find  praises  of  women  for  not 
resorting  to  it." 

Details  of  further  aspects  of  such  matters  may 
be  found  in  Soranus — one  of  an  honourable  family 
of  physicians  practising  in  Rome  in  the  first 
century  a.d. 

*  See  Sen.,  De  Ira,  i.  15,  2:   "  Liberos  quoque,  si  dobiles,  mon- 
strosive  editi  sint,  mergimus." 

^  See,  however,  Ovid :  "  Scope  suos  utero  quae  necat  ipsa  perit." 


THE   RACE   IN   ROME  141 

Dr.  Inge^  quotes  Petronius,  who  says:  "No 
one  acknowledges  children ;  for  the  man  who  has 
heirs  is  never  invited  to  any  festive  gathering,  but 
is  left  to  associate  with  the  dregs  of  society.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  childless  man  is  covered  with 
honours,  and  passes  for  a  model  of  all  the  virtues," 
and  Dr.  Inge  adds  :  "  So  great  were  the  advantages 
of  childlessness  that  Seneca  consoles  a  mother  who 
had  just  lost  her  only  son  by  reminding  her  of 
the  greater  consideration  that  she  will  now  enjoy. ^ 
A  man  who  married  was  regarded  as  hardly  in  his 
senses.  .  .  ." 

Early  in  his  reign  Augustus  set  himself  to  the 
task  of  reversing  these  conditions  and  rolling  back 
the  tide  of  time.  His  famous  reform,  the  Lex 
Julia,  appeared  in  18  B.C.  It  was  divided  into 
three  parts,  whereof  the  Lex  de  maritandis  ordiiiibus 
attempted  to  combat  the  increasing  tendency  to 
celibacy  and  sterility  by  a  system  of  penalties  and 
rewards.  The  penalties  seem  to  have  been  chiefly 
operative  under  the  laws  of  inheritance.  Severe 
limitations  were  placed  on  the  capacity  of  the 
unmarried  to  receive  a  legacy,  and  their  severity 
was  only  halved  to  those  who,  although  married, 
were  childless.  Property  was  to  pass  to  those  who 
had  children.  If  a  husband  and  wife  had  children, 
they  could  leave  their  possessions  to  one  another ; 
but,  if  they  had  no  children,  only  a  tenth  part; 
and,  if  they  had  children  by  another  marriage, 
they  might  leave  to  one  another  as  many  tenths 
as  there  were  children.     If  a  husband   absented 

1  Op.cit,  p.  31. 

2  See  also  Tac,  Ann.f  iii.  25  :  "  prsevalida  orbitate." 


142         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

himself  from  his  wife,  except  on  public  business, 
he  was  deprived  of  the  power  to  receive  a  legacy. 
Vacant  legacies  were  inherited  by  the  State.  Two 
years  were  allowed  to  a  widow  or  a  widower  before 
remarriage  became  compulsory. 

The  rewards  were  designed  to  render  marriage 
and  the  possession  of  a  family  fashionable.  Married 
men  with  families  were  selected  for  promotions, 
precedence  in  the  theatre,  and  remission  of 
taxation. 

The  second  part  was  the  Lex  de  adulteriis,  and 
finally  came  the  Leoo  sumptuaria.  This  last  was 
designed  to  prevent  the  dissipation  of  a  family 
fortune  by  extravagance;  property  was  to  pass 
to  children. 

In  A.D.  9,  Augustus  promulgated  the  Law 
Pappia  Poppgea,  the  greatest  work  of  Roman 
legislation  since  the  Twelve  Tables.  It  was  an 
extension  and  codification  of  the  Lex  Julia, 

"II  donna,"  writes  De  Montesquieu,^  ''la  loi 
qu'on  nomma  de  son  nom  Julia  et  Pappia  Pop- 
pcea  du  nom  des  consuls^  d'une  partie  de  cette 
annee-la.  La  grandeur  du  mal  paroissoit  dans 
leur  Election  meme  ;  Dion  ^  nous  dit  qu'ils  n'etoient 
point  mari^s  et  qu'ils  n'avoient  point  d'enfans. 

*'  Cette  loi  d'Auguste  fut  proprement  un  code  de 
loix  et  un  corps  systematique  de  tons  les  reglemens 
qu'on  pouvoit  faire  sur  ce  sujet.  On  y  refondit  les 
loix  Juliennes*  et  on  leur  donna  plus  de  force: 

^  De  V  Esprit  des  Loix,  Li  v.  xxiii.,  chap.  xxi. 
^  Marcus  Pappius  Mutilus  and  Q.  Poppseus  Sabinus. 
^  Dion.,  liv.,  Ivi. 

*  Le  titre  14  des  fragmens  d'Ulpien  distingue  fort  bien  la  loi 
Julienne  de  la  Pappienne. 


THE   RACE   IN   ROME  143 

elles  ont  tant  de  vues,  elles  influent  sur  tant  de 
choses,  qu'elles  forment  la  plus  belle  partie  des 
loix  civiles  des  Romaines." 

These  laws  were  not  permitted  to  become  a 
dead  letter.  Julia  herself,  the  only  daughter  of 
Augustus,  the  widow  of  Agrippa,  the  mother  of 
Caius  and  Lucius  Ceesar,  and  the  wife  of  Tiberius, 
was  convicted  under  the  drastic  provisions  of  the 
Lex  de  adulteiiis,  and  banished,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-seven, to  the  barren  little  island  of  Pandataria. 
The  sentence  was  never  revoked,  and  she  died  in 
extreme  want  and  misery.  Her  daughter,  of  the 
same  name,  offended  against  the  same  law,  and 
was  banished  to  a  small  island  in  the  Adriatic. 
Neither  was  the  operation  of  the  law  confined 
to  such  persons  as  the  Julias.  Tacitus  ^  says  that 
"  Spies  were  appointed,  who  by  the  Law  Pappia 
Poppsea  were  encouraged  with  rewards  to  watch 
such  as  neglected  the  privileges  of  marriage,  in 
order  that  the  State,  the  common  parent,  might 
obtain  their  vacant  possessions."  Some  of  these 
spies  became  extremely  rich,  and  the  system  of 
"  delation  "  assumed  enormous  proportions. 

Nevertheless  the  law  failed  in  its  purpose. 
Tacitus  writes,^  "  Not  even  by  this  means  (Lex 
Pappia  Poppaea)  did  marriages  and  the  bringing  up 
of  children  become  more  in  vogue,  the  advantage 
of  having  no  children  to  inherit  outweighing  the 
penalty  of  disobedience." 

In  A.D.  9,  thirty -four  years  after  the  Leoo 
Julia  had   come   into  force,   Augustus  received, 

^  Ann.^  iii.  28. 
2  Ihid.,  iii.  25. 


144  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

says  Echard,^  great   complaints  "concerning  the 
too    great    Number    of    the    unmarry'd    Equites, 
which   in   a  great    measure    proceeded   from   the 
Looseness   of  their   Lives.      This,  together  with 
the   fatal    Example   of    it   to   others,   appear'd   a 
Matter  of  so  dangerous   a  Consequence  to  this 
good   Emperor,   that  he   immediately   summon'd 
the  whole  Body  of  the  Equestnan  Order ;  where, 
in  the   Assembly,   he   ordered  the   Marry 'd   and 
Unmarry'd    Persons    to    be     separately    plac'd : 
Then  observing  the  former  to  be  much  inferior 
to  the  latter   in   number,  after   high   applauding 
of  the   Marry'd    Sort,   he   told   the    other.    That 
their  Lives  and  Actions  has  been  so  peculiar,  that 
he  knew  not  by  what  Name  to  call  'em;   not  by 
that  of  Men,  for  they  peiform'' d  nothing  that  was 
Manly  ;  nor  by  that  of  Citizens,  for  the  City  might 
perish  notwithstanding  their  Care:  nor  by  that  of 
Romans,  for  they  design  d  to  extirpate  the  Roman 
name.     Then  proceeding  to  shew  his  tender  Care 
and   hearty  Affection  for  his  People,  he  further 
told  'em.  That  their  Course  of  Life  was  of  such 
pernicious  consequence  to  the  Crloi^y  and  Gy^andeur 
of  the  Roman  Nation,  that  he  cou'd  not  chuse  but 
tell  'em,  That  all  other  Crimes  put  together  coiCd 
not  equalize  theirs :  For  they  were  guilty  of  Murder, 
in  not  suffering  those  to  be  born,  which  shoud  pro- 
ceed from  'em  ;  of  Impiety,  in  causing  the  Names 
and  Honours  of  their  Ancestors  to  cease ;  and  of 
Sacrilege,  in  dest?'oyi7ig  their  kind,  which  proceed 
from  the  Immortal  Gods,  and  Human  Nature,  the 
principal  thing  consecrated  to  'em.     Therefore^  in 

^  Op.  cit.y  vol.  ii.  pp.  44  and  45. 


THE   RACE   IN  ROME  145 

that  respect  they  dissolvd  the  Government,  in  dis- 
obeying its  Laws;  betray  d  their  Country,  by  making 
it  Barren  and  Waste;  nay  and  demolish' d  their 
City,  in  depriving  it  of  Inhabitants,  And  he  was 
sensible  that  all  this  ^proceeded  not  from  any  kind 
of  F^e?iue  or  Abstinence,  but  from  a  Looseness  and 
Wantonness  which  ought  never  to  be  encoui^ag'd  in 
any  Civil  Government.  Having  finish'd  his  Speech, 
he  immediately  increas'd  the  Rewards  of  such  as 
had  Children,  and  impos'd  considerable  Fines  upon 
unmarry'd  Persons,  allowing  them  the  Term  of  a 
Year,  in  which  Space,  if  they  comply'd,  they  were 
freed  from  the  Penalty." 

There  is  a  strange  commentary  upon  this  speech. 
In  the  reign  of  Nero,  fifty  years  after  the  death  of 
Augustus,  Tacitus  attests  that  "nearly  all  the 
Equites  and  the  greater  number  of  the  Senators 
betrayed  a  servile  origin."  This  is  much  as  though 
the  financial  department  of  our  Civil  Service  were 
manned  by  the  naturalised  sons  of  aliens,  and  the 
greater  number  of  the  members  of  our  House  of 
Lords  betrayed  a  similar  origin.  At  a  later  period, 
even  among  the  emperors,  many  cease  to  be  of 
Roman  blood. 

For  long  the  framework  of  the  State  was  main- 
tained by  the  constant  influx  of  aliens,  chiefly 
slaves  from  the  East,  and  German  invaders  from 
the  North.  The  manumission  of  slaves  went  on 
uninterruptedly,  and  was  a  State  necessity.  The 
slave  had  a  right  to  certain  private  savings — his 
peculium — and  with  this  could  frequently  purchase 
his  freedom.  On  manumission,  those  of  servile 
birth  entered  into  the  middle  class  of  libertines 

K 


146  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

or  freedmen,  and,  even  in  the  time  of  the  first 
Cgesars,  it  sufficed  to  be  born  free  to  be  qualified 
as  ingenuous,  or  native  freeborn  as  opposed  to 
foreign.  This  was  decided  by  the  condition  of 
the  mother.  "  And  the  candour  of  the  laws  was 
satisfied,"  says  Gibbon,^  '*if  her  freedom  could  be 
ascertained,  during  a  single  moment,  between  the 
conception  and  the  delivery." 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  evident  that 
the  statistics  which  have  come  down  to  us  are 
vitiated.  If  the  Chinese  were  admitted  into 
Australia,  and  their  Australian  -  born  children 
were  reckoned  as  Australians,  no  deduction  re- 
lating to  the  white  race  could  be  drawn  from 
the  figures  of  a  census. 

Still,  we  know  that  the  relief  to  depopulation 
that  was  thus  afforded  was  only  temporary. 
Reason  did  not  spare  the  newcomers,  and  multi- 
tudes poured  into  Italy,  only  to  vanish,  like  a 
river  flowing  into  sands. 

History  holds  no  record  of  a  more  courageous 
and  magnificent  attempt  than  that  of  Augustus 
to  reconcile  the  interests  of  Society  and  the  Race 
on  a  geocentric  basis.  His  lifelong  effort  failed; 
the  Roman  world  paraphrased  the  corrosive 
question  that  was  asked  by  the  Emperor  Helio- 
gabalus :  "  Can  anything  be  better  for  a  man 
than  to  be  heir  to  himself?"  and  decided  that 
nothing  could  be  better  for  Society  than  to 
spend  the  inheritance  of  the  Race  upon  itself. 
The  legislation  of  Augustus  could  not  traverse 
the  strict  logic  of  that   conclusion.     Twenty-six 

^  0;p.  cit.f  chap.  xliv. 


THE   RACE   IN   ROME  147 

years  after  Diocletian  stepped  down  from  the 
throne,  Constantine  removed  the  seat  of  im- 
perial power  from  the  Tiber  to  the  Bosphorus, 
and  we  find  Lactantius,  a  Christian  writer  who 
was  contemporary  with  both,  bewailing  the 
"ominous  depopulation  of  Italy,"  and  the  crush- 
ing taxation  that  fell  on  the  few  survivors. 
Pure  Reason  had  extirpated  the  great  breed  of 
the  builders  of  Rome,  and  civilisation  suffered 
an  eclipse  that  lasted  for  a  thousand  years. 


CHAPTER  V 


GREECE 


The  history  of  ancient  Greek  civilisation  is  parallel 
to  that  of  the  Roman.  We  find  the  same  geo- 
centric quality  in  religion,  the  same  character  in 
Society,  and  the  same  disappearance  of  the  Race. 
Essentially,  the  history  of  ancient  Greece  is  the 
record  of  a  brief  period  of  intellectual  eminence, 
and  our  interest  is  centred  in  the  rapidity  of  the 
appearance  of  this  high  development  of  Reason,  the 
astonishing  perfection  to  which  it  was  carried,  the 
shortness  of  its  duration,  and  the  suddenness  with 
which  it  vanished.  The  history  of  mental  ability 
in  Greece  is  that  of  a  rocket.  There  is  the  rapid 
ascent  of  a  thin  stream  of  light,  the  brilliance  for  a 
moment,  and  then  again  darkness. 

The  period  of  intellectual  productiveness  in  the 
Greek  race  only  extends  over  less  than  200  years, 
and  yet  it  has  set  its  mark  upon  the  world  ever 
since.  The  men  who  made  the  name  of  their 
country  famous  were  born  between  525  B.C.  and 
342  B.C. ;  before  and  after  those  years  such  dis- 
tinguished names  as  those  in  the  following  list  are 
few  and  far  between  : — 


Born  B.C. 

Born  B.C. 

Born  B.C 

^*Rchylus . 

.  525 

Thucydides   . 

.  471 

Demosthenes      .  395 

Piudar .     . 

.  522 

Socrates    .     . 

.  469 

^schines  .     .     .389 

Sophocles . 

.  495 

Hippocrates  , 

.  460 

Aristotle  .     .     .384 

Phidias     . 

.  490 

Aristophanes 

.  444 

Praxiteles  (fior.)  364 

Herodotus 

.  484 

Xenophon 

.  444 

Zeuo     ....  362 

Euripides . 

.  480 

Plato    .     .     . 

148 

.  428 

Epicurus   .    .     .342 

GREECE  149 

There  is,  furthermore,  a  consensus  of  opinion 
among  modern  scholars  to  the  effect  that,  during 
this  period,  a  general  intellectual  capacity  was 
diffused  among  the  worshippers  of  Athene  that  is 
not  less  astonishing  than  the  number  of  the  men 
of  genius  who  were  produced. 

Two  questions  evidently  arise.  Firstly,  we 
have  to  ask  :  "  What  was  the  cause  that  determined 
the  suddenness  of  the  disappearance  of  this  intel- 
lectual splendour,  and  the  shortness  of  its  con- 
tinuance?" Secondly,  we  may  be  permitted  to 
ask :  "  What  was  the  cause  of  its  equally  sudden 
eruption  ? " 

In  regard  to  the  first  question,  we  may  point 
out  that,  although  the  writer  did  not  intend  it, 
there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  5th  Book  of  the 
Republic  of  Plato,  and  parts  of  the  Politics  of 
Aristotle,  may  be  read  as  an  explanation  of  the 
disappearance  of  Greek  civilisation.  That  dis- 
appearance is  an  occurrence  which  falls  into  its 
place  along  with  other  similar  phenomena.  We 
have  seen  it  in  Rome,  and  analysed  its  causation : 
we  know  that  in  Greece  the  conditions  were  so 
similar  that  a  like  result  might  be  expected. 
There  also  the  great  breed  died  out.  The  pro- 
duction of  its  wonderful  works  ceases  abruptly — in 
an  hour  the  spring  ran  dry;  and  we  find  nothing 
in  the  record  of  Greek  morals  that  debars  us  from 
the  conclusion  that  the  suddenness  with  which  the 
extermination  of  the  brilliant  Race  was  effected 
stands  in  direct  proportion  to  the  pre-eminence  in 
Reason  that  had  been  attained  by  its  individual 
members. 


150  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Our  second  question:  "What  caused  the 
sudden  development  of  a  Race  possessed  of  such 
supreme  intellectual  ability?"  is  one  that  only 
concerns  our  argument  indirectly,  and  yet  is  not 
so  far  removed  from  it  that  we  can  neglect  it 
altogether. 

Study  of  the  literature  and  life  of  ancient 
Greece  leads  to  a  suspicion  that  efforts  were  made 
to  breed  the  most  successful  Race.  It  may  safely 
be  said  that  the  subject  was  certainly  present  in 
Greek  thought — it  was  "  in  the  air."  It  was  much 
discussed,  for  their  philosophers  have  left  us  the 
outlines  of  imaginary  States  wherein  such  an  effort 
was  to  be  carried  out — wherein  the  abolition  of 
social  competition  was  to  involve,  naturally,  the 
abolition  of  free  sexual  selection,  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  a  system  whereby  none  but  the  most 
able  members  were  to  be  chosen  for  parentage. 
Their  offspring  were  to  be  supported  and  reared  at 
the  public  expense,  while  the  less  able  members, 
by  various  expedients,  were  to  be  prevented  from 
contributing  to  the  numbers  of  the  State. 

Dr.  Bateson,  in  his  great  work  on  Mendelism,^ 
makes  the  following  remarks  in  his  paragraph  (pp. 
303-6)  on  its  sociological  application :  "  The  out- 
come of  genetic  research  is  to  show  that  human 
society  can,  if  it  so  please,  control  its  composition 
more  easily  than  was  previously  supposed  possible. 
.  .  .  The  consequence  of  such  action  will  be  im- 
mediate and  decisive."  We  cannot  lay  too  much 
stress  upon  this  weighty  expression  of  opinion,  and 

*  Mendel's  Principles  of  Heredity^  by  W.  Bateson,  M.A.,  F.R.S. 
Cambridge  University  Press,  1909. 


GREECE  151 

the  hypothesis  that,  in  ancient  Greece,  eugenic 
measures  were  not  only  "  in  the  air,"  but  in  opera- 
tion, would  explain  the  sudden  eruption  of  a  high 
development  of  Reason. 

Nevertheless,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out 
(p.  54),  the  basis  of  a  permanent  civilisation  does 
not  lie  hidden  among  the  secrets  of  heredity,  and 
no  success  in  breeding  for  intellectual  ability  will, 
pel'  se,  suffice  to  reveal  it. 

Further  examination  of  the  records  of  ancient 
Greek  life  should  be  able  to  confirm  or  reject  the 
hypothesis  that  the  period  of  ability  arose  as  the 
result  of  the  selection  of  the  more  able  for  parent- 
age, and  the  rejection  of  the  less  able.  If  it  were 
confirmed,  then  we  should  see  not  only  the  im- 
mediate success  of  eugenic  measures,  but  also  their 
ultimate  result  in  the  prompt  self-destruction  of 
the  Race.  The  whole  subject  is  worthy  of  in- 
vestigation by  the  modern  students  of  "  positive  " 
Eugenics,  for,  to  quote  Thucydides,  "  History  is 
philosophy  teaching  by  examples." 


\ 


CHAPTER  VI 

RELIGION   IN   CHINA 

When  we  turn  to  the  enduring  civilisation  of  the 
far  East,  we  find  that  the  conditions  are  the  very 
opposite  of  those  obtaining  in  the  ephemeral  civili- 
sations of  the  West.  The  contrast  is  not  merely 
one  springing  from  superficial  distinctions  of  manner 
and  custom.  It  is  so  profound  and  so  detailed  as 
to  have  a  startling  effect  upon  the  mind,  and  seems 
to  have  been  arranged  artificially  and  of  set  pur- 
pose. The  impression  produced  upon  a  man  of 
European  origin,  arrived  in  China,  is  not  ade- 
quately expressed  by  saying  that  he  is  bewildered, 
or  that  he  finds  himself  at  a  loss.  The  very 
foundations  of  life,  as  he  has  known  it,  have 
crumbled,  and  others  have  taken  their  place :  the 
world's  centre  of  gravity  seems  to  have  moved, 
and  to  be  over  his  head.  He  has  landed  in  another 
universe. 

We  must  seek  for  the  explanation  of  this  pheno- 
menon far  down  in  the  contrast  between  the  re- 
ligious atmosphere  of  the  West  and  that  of  the 
East.  The  idea  of  Christian  duty  has  been  so 
far  rationalised  that  there  are  many  minds  in  which 
it  is  almost  limited  to  our  duty  to  Society.  In 
China,  on  the  other  hand,  the  European  finds 
himself  amid  a  population  whose  sense  of  religious 

152 


RELIGION   IN   CHINA  153 

duty,  not  less  one-sided  or  less  extraordinary  than 
his  own,  is  limited  to  the  duty  that  is  owing  to 
'  the  Race.     The  European  and  the  Chinaman  are, 
in  fact,  looking  at  opposite  sides  of  the  shield. 

The  mutual  misunderstanding  that  follows  is 
so  complete  that,  to  the  European,  the  Chinese 
appear  as  a  nation  of  materialists,  and  the  most 
unreligious  of  peoples.  The  mistake  is  akin  to 
that  which  led  the  Romans  to  accuse  the  early 
Christians  of  atheism :  and  the  one  charge  is  as 
baseless  as  the  other. 

The  Buddhism  of  China  is  but  a  thin  veneer 
that  overlies  Tao,  the  ancient  core  of  Chinese 
belief,  for  the  pantheism  of  Sakyamuni  has  been 
found  compatible  with  the  native  worship.  ''  Tao  " 
means  "The  Path" — the  path,  that  is,  of  the 
active  and  creative  principle  in  the  universe.  The 
desire  to  live  in  conformity  with  this  path  is  indi- 
cated in  a  subsidiary  manner  in  the  system  of 
geomancy  that  is  known  as  Fung-Shui,  but  is  fully 
seen  in  the  system  of  Ancestor  Worship. 

The  meaning  that  this  worship  has  for  the 
mass  of  the  people  is  not  very  easily  realised  by 
the  white  man,  either  from  a  study  of  the  Chinese 
classics,  or  by  conversation  with  Chinese  literati. 
The  knowledge  thus  acquired  is  apt  to  be  purely 
external,  and  to  lead  to  a  presentation  of  the 
subject  that  is  European  rather  than  Chinese. 
The  surest  means  of  obtaining  an  adequate  con- 
ception of  the  real  belief  of  the  Chinese  millions 
is  by  an  interpretation  of  the  antique  ritual  that 
is  actually  practised  in  the  temples.  Many  years 
ago,  when  in  China,  the  writer  had  an  opportunity 


154         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

of  "worshipping  his  ancestors"  in  a  much-fre- 
quented temple,  and,  as  the  experience  occurred 
to  himself,  it  is  more  convenient  to  describe  it 
in  the  first  person. 

The  chief  priest  and  I,  on  meeting,  vied  with 
one  another  in  courtesy;  and  my  interpreter  ex- 
plained the  desire  that  I  felt  to  provide  for  my 
long-neglected  ancestors.  The  most  instructive 
part  of  the  interview  immediately  followed.  The 
priest  politely  inquired  as  to  the  number  of  my 
children.  I  could  not  then — as  now — claim  the 
title  of  Paterfamilias :  I  was  not  even  married. 
These  facts  having  been  duly  explained  by  the 
interpreter,    the    priest    bowed    in    a    conclusive 

\  manner  that  implied  that  the  interview  was  at 
an  end.  Though  young  in  years,  I  was  not  inex- 
perienced in  travel,  and  presently  an  accomviode- 
ment  was  found,  and  I  was  dismissed  to  consult 
the  temple  oracle.  My  interpreter  and  I  passed 
through  several  of  the  courts  of  the  temple,  and, 
arrived  at  the  oracle,  my  candle  was  lighted  and 
the  ceremonies  of  the  occasion  duly  observed.  In 
the  end  I  was  furnished  with  a  slip  of  yellow  paper 
bearing  Chinese  characters.  Fortunately  for  my 
purpose,  these,  as  I  afterwards  learned,  set  forth 

N  that  I  was  destined  to  be  the  father  of  "many 
children,  sons  and  daughters."  Armed  with  this 
certificate  of  fitness,  I  returned  to  the  chief  priest, 
and  was  permitted  to  proceed  with  the  worship 
that  was  before  denied  to  me. 

Concerning  this  worship,  it  will  suffice  to  say 

\  that  it  took  the  form  of  an  expression  of  my  rever- 
ence for  those  who  are  the  authors  of  my  being. 


RELIGION   IN  CHINA  155 

If  we  can  divine  the  true  meaning  that  under- 
lies this  ritual  and  the  conditions  that  control 
admission  to  it,  we  shall  have  arrived  at  an 
understanding  of  a  faith  that  has  built  up  an 
unshakeable  civilisation,  and  through  thousands 
of  years  has  illuminated  the  lives  of  uncountable 
millions.  What  meaning,  then,  do  we  see  in  it  ? 
We  see  that  it  is  filled  full  with  the  idea  of 
creature  and  Creator — of  the  individual  in  his 
relation  to  the  living  and  creative  principle  of 
the  universe.  The  Chinaman,  through  the  long 
chain  of  those,  his  own  proximate  creators,  who 

V  have  gone  before  him,  worships  the  ultimate 
Creator.  And,  if  the  chain  thus  extends  back- 
wards, so  also  must  it  reach  forwards.  The  chain 
of  worship  must  not  be  broken;  it  must  never 
come  to  an  end.  Only  when  he  himself  has 
assumed  the  character  of  a  creator  is  the  China- 
man  qualified   to   worship ;    only  by  fatherhood, 

.,  actual  or  divinely  guaranteed,  is  he  justified  in 
appearing  before  his  ancestors  and  his  Creator, 
paying  to  them  their  due  meed  of  homage.  The 
chain  of  creation  is  one  with  the  chain  of  worship, 
and  to  break  the  one  is  to  break  the  other."  The 
Chinese  sense  of  religious  reverence  is  expressed 
by  the  word  Hiao,  a  term  that  does  not  admit 
of  an  English  rendering,  except  by  some  such 
poverty-stricken  translation  as  "filial  piety."  In 
the  mind  of  a  Chinaman,  Hiao  not  only  implies 
a  sense  of  devotion  to  his  creators  and  their 
Creator,  but  also  the  piety  that  provides  the  gene- 
rations to  come,  lest  the  chain  of  worship  should 
be  broken.     To  break  the  chain  selfishly  is,  to  a 


156         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Chinaman,  sin  unthinkable.  He  knows  nothing 
of  the  distinctions  that  we  draw  between  the 
altar  and  the  hearth :  a  sonless  Chinaman  has 
failed  in  the  primary  justification  of  his  being, 
and  is  cut  off  from  the  infinitude  and  eternity 
\^  that  surround  him.  Fatherhood  is  his  first  duty 
and  his  only  worth. 

Such  a  religion  as  this  is  in  no  sense  geocentric  : 
the  interest  of  its  votaries  is  not  considered — it 
serves  no  purpose  of  the  individual,  for  (as  we  shall 
see  in  the  next  chapter)  it  breaks  him  as  though 
upon  a  wheel.  The  interest  of  Society  is  ignored,  it 
inculcates  no  obedience  to  the  Government,  and  is 
no  polity  of  the  State,  for  the  State  can  barely  exist 
in  its  presence.  Hiao  has  no  social  influence  ;  social 
conduct  is  left  in  such  darkness  that  there  the 
Chinese  have  had  to  fall  back  upon  the  guidance 
of  Confucius,  who,  outside  his  Tao-ism,  obtained 
his  importance  merely  as  an  ethical  philosopher. 
It  serves,  indeed,  the  race,  and  its  power  is  con- 
centrated upon  one  point — the  preservation  of  the 
family — upon  overcoming,  that  is,  the  precise 
form  of  rational  conduct  that  has  destroyed  the 
Western  civilisations.  This  result,  however,  is 
no  more  than  an  accident,  for  Tao  rules  in  virtue 
of  its  own  authority.  To  him  who  follows  Tao, 
the  Path  of  Creation,  racial  affairs  are  lifted  into 
the  clear  region  of  duty — he  is  brought  into  contact 
with  the  infinite;  he  serves  in  self-sacrifice,  and 
his  life  acquires  cosmocentric  significance.  Tao 
is  not  ad  hoc. 

In  the  Chinese  civilisation,  then,  the  governing 
factors  are  exactly  opposite  to  those  that  prevailed 


RELIGION   IN   CHINA  157 

in  the  Roman,  and  we  may  look  for  results  that 
are  not  less  divergent.  We  may  expect  to  see 
the  impoverishment  of  Society,  the  invulnerability 
of  the  Race,  and  the  age-long  preservation  of  its 
civilisation. 


CHAPTER    VII 

SOCIETY    IN    CHINA 

-^  When  we  come  to  examine  the  facts  of  social  life 
in  China,  our  a  priori  expectations  prove  to  be 
true,  and  we  find  that,  just  as  Society  in  Rome 
went  to  one  extreme,  so  Society  in  China  flies  to 
the  opposite,  and  that  the  splendour  of  the  one  is 
not  less  astonishing  than  the  sordid  squalor  of  the 
other.  The  narrow  Chinese  conception  of  religious 
duty  is  obeyed  with  all  the  intensity  of  narrowness. 
The  land  teems  with  humanity,  but  there  is  no 
suggestion  of  communism,  and  the  social  stress 
assumes  a  horrible  severity.' 

The  absence  of  any  form  of  communism  is 
most  clearly  to  be  seen  in  the  contrast  between 
the  ancient  or  modern  trades  union  and  its 
Chinese  analogue.  The  vast  Chinese  industrial 
associations  consist  chiefly,  but  not  entirely,  of 
unskilled  labourers,  and  are  not  confined  to  men 
of  any  one  trade.  A  bargain  is  struck  between 
the  workman  and  the  agent  of  the  association. 
Perhaps,  in  a  remote  village,  a  young  workman 
agrees  that  his  labour  shall  be  farmed  out  by  the 
association  for  so  many  years — generally  six.  He 
undertakes  to  go  wherever  the  association  sends 
him,  and  to  undertake  work  of  any  description, 
and  at  any  time.     The  association,  on  its  part, 

158 


SOCIETY   IN   CHINA  159 

contracts  to  lodge,  to  clothe,  to  feed  him,  and 
to  maintain  him  in  illness,  or  during  unemploy- 
ment, throughout  six  years.  All  this  time  he 
receives  neither  wage  or  reward,  but  the  associa- 
tion engages,  on  the  expiry  of  that  period,  to  take 
him  back  to  his  native  village,  and  then  and  there 
to  pay  him  a  stipulated  amount  in  a  lump  sum. 
Obviously  the  expenses  of  the  association  are  con- 
siderable ;  obviously  also  the  man,  far  from  home 
and  dependent  on  the  association,  cannot  take  the 
risk  of  incurring  the  suspicion  of  slackness,  weak- 
ness, or  any  kind  of  inefficiency  that  might  enable 
the  association  to  repudiate  its  part  of  the  bargain. 
The  result  is  that  he  is  spent  and  spends  himself 
without  mercy.  It  would  not  pay  the  association 
to  engage  him  for  a  longer  term ;  too  often  his 
health  and  strength  are  broken  at  the  end  of  six 
years.  But  the  scene  changes  when  he  is  once 
more  with  his  family  and  receives  his  little  fortune. 
Thereafter  he  joins  the  ranks  of  the  capitalists  :  he 
can  engage  in  trade ;  perhaps  he  buys  a  sampan — 
certainly  he  buys  his  wife ;  he  becomes  the  father 
of  a  family,  and  woe  betide  his  competitors  ! 

Thus,  in  joining  one  of  these  combinations,  the 
workman's  very  object  is  to  equip  himself  for  an 
after-life  of  competition — not,  as  in  any  Western 
system,  ancient  or  modern,  to  protect  himself 
against  it.  The  contrast  with  the  ancient  Roman 
system  detailed  by  Professor  Flinders  Petrie  is 
indeed  remarkable.  Here  is  no  State  interference, 
no  compulsion  to  join,  and  no  monopoly  of  a  trade. 
Not  less  remarkable  is  a  comparison  with  the 
modern  Western  system.     There  is  no  effort  to 


160         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

withhold  labour ;  the  association  acts  as  a  gigantic 
labour-exchange;  men  can  be  sent  anywhere  in 
any  required  number,  and  the  skilled  man  is  kept 
to  his  speciality.  The  employer  contracts  with 
the  association,  not  with  the  man  or  men,  to  pay 
an  agreed  price  for  a  certain  work,  and  his  dealings 
with  the  men  are  indirect.  Neither  strike  nor 
lock-out  can  occur. 

The  severity  of  the  social  stress  that  obtains 
in  China  is  terrible.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
read  all  the  many  works  that  have  been  published 
on  Chinese  life,  but  we  have  met  with  none  more 
vivid  or  more  to  the  point,  nor  one,  so  far  as  our 
own  knowledge  goes,  more  accurate,  than  an  article 
in  the  Century  Monthly  Illustrated  Magaziiie  of 
July  1911,  written  by  Mr.  Edward  Als worth  Ross, 
Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Wis- 
consin, under  the  title  of  "  The  Struggle  for 
Existence  in  China."  Any  one  who  is  interested 
in  the  actual  life  of  the  Chinese  should  read  the 
whole  of  his  paper.  From  it  we  take  the  follow- 
ing extracts : 

*'Most  of  the  stock  explanations  of  national 
poverty  throw  no  light  on  the  condition  of  the 
Chinese.  They  are  not  impoverished  by  the 
niggardliness  of  the  soil,  for  China  is  one  of  the 
most  bountiful  seats  occupied  by  man.  Their 
state  is  not  the  just  recompense  of  sloth,  for  no 
people  is  better  broken  to  heavy,  unremitting 
toil.  The  trouble  is  not  lack  of  intelligence  in 
their  work,  for  they  are  skilful  farmers  and  clever 
in  the  arts  and  crafts.  Nor  have  they  been  dragged 
down  into  their  pit  of  wolfish  competition  by  waste- 


SOCIETY   IN   CHINA  161 

ful  vices.  Opium-smoking  and  gambling  do,  in- 
deed, ruin  many  a  home,  but  it  is  certain  that, 
even  for  untainted  families  and  communities,  the 
plane  of  living  is  far  lovrer  than  in  Western 
countries.  They  are  not  the  victims  of  the  ra- 
pacity of  their  rulers,  for  if  their  Government 
does  little  for  them,  it  exacts  little.  In  good 
times  its  fiscal  claims  are  far  from  crushing.  The 
basic  conditions  of  prosperity,  liberty  of  person 
and  security  of  property,  are  well  established. 
There  is,  to  be  sure,  no  security  for  industrial 
investments;  but  property  in  land  and  goods  is 
reasonably  well  protected.  Nor  is  the  lot  of  the 
masses  due  to  exploitation.  In  the  cities  there 
is  a  sprinkling  of  rich,  but  out  in  the  provinces 
one  may  travel  for  weeks  and  see  no  sign  of  a 
wealthy  class — no  mansion  or  fine  country-place, 
no  costume  or  equipage  befitting  the  rich.  There 
are  great  stretches  of  fertile  agricultural  country 
where  the  struggle  for  subsistence  is  stern,  and 
yet  the  cultivator  owns  his  land  and  implements 
and  pays  tribute  to  no  man." 

"  For  a  grinding  mass-poverty  that  cannot  be 
matched  in  the  Occident  there  remains  but  one 
general  cause,  namely,  the  crowding  of  population 
upon  the  means  of  subsistence  "  (p.  437). 

"The  traveller  who,  in  dismay  at  the  stories 
of  the  dirt  and  vermin  of  native  inns,  plans  to 
camp  in  the  cleanly  open  is  incredulous  when  he 
is  told  that  there  is  no  room  to  pitch  a  tent.  Yet 
such  is  the  case  in  two-thirds  of  China.  He  will 
find  no  roadside,  no  commons,  no  waste  land,  no 
pasture,  no  groves  or  orchards,  not  even  a  door- 

L 


162  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

yard  or  a  cow-pen.  Save  the  threshing-floor, 
every  outdoor  spot  fit  to  spread  a  blanket  on  is 
growing  something  "  (p.  430). 

"  In  one  sense  it  is  true  that  China  is  cultivated 
'  like  a  garden,'  for  every  lump  is  broken  up,  every 
weed  is  destroyed,  and  every  plant  is  tended  like 
a  baby.  So  far,  however,  as  the  '  garden '  calls  up 
visions  of  pleasure  and  delight,  it  does  not  apply. 
In  county  after  county  you  will  not  see  alto- 
gether a  rood  of  land  reserved  for  recreation  or 
pleasure  ..."  (p.  430). 

"No  weed  or  stalk  escapes  the  bamboo  rake 
of  the  autumnal  fuel-gatherer.  The  grass  tufts  on 
the  rough  slopes  are  dug  up  by  the  roots.  The 
sickle  reaps  the  grain  close  to  the  ground,  for 
straw  and  chaff  are  needed  to  burn  under  the  rice- 
kettle.  The  leaves  of  the  trees  are  a  crop  to  be 
carefully  gathered.  One  never  sees  a  rotting  stump 
or  a  mossy  log.  Bundles  of  brush,  carried  miles 
on  the  human  back,  heat  the  brick-kiln  and  the 
potter's  furnace.  After  the  last  trees  have  been 
taken,  the  far  and  forbidding  heights  are  scaled 
by  lads  with  axe  and  mattock  to  cut  down  or  dig 
up  the  seedlings  that,  if  left  alone,  would  reclothe 
the  devastated  ridges  "  (p.  433). 

"A  Chinese  city  has  no  sewers,  nor  does  it 
greatly  need  them.  Long  before  sunrise,  tank- 
boats  from  the  farms  have  crept  through  the  city 
by  a  network  of  canals,  and  by  the  time  the 
foreigner  has  finished  his  morning  coffee,  a  legion 
of  scavengers  have  collected  for  the  encouragement 
of  the  crops  that  which  we  cast  into  our  sewers. 
After  a  rain,  countrymen  with  buckets  prowl  about 


SOCIETY   IN    CHINA  163 

the  streets  scooping  black  mud  out  of  hollows  and 
gutters  or  dipping  liquid  filth  from  the  wayside 
sinks.  A  highway  traversed  by  two  hundred 
carts  a  day  is  as  free  from  filth  as  a  garden  path, 
for  the  neighbouring  farmers  patrol  it  with  basket 
and  rake. 

"  No  natural  resource  is  too  trifling  to  be  turned 
to  account  by  the  teeming  population.  The  sea 
is  raked  and  strained  for  edible  plunder.  Seaweed 
and  kelp  have  a  place  in  the  larder.  Great  quan- 
tities of  shell- fish  no  bigger  than  one's  finger-nail 
are  opened  and  made  to  yield  a  food  that  finds 
its  way  far  inland.  The  fungus  that  springs  up 
in  the  grass  after  a  rain  is  eaten.  Fried  sweet- 
potato  vines  furnish  the  poor  man's  table.  The 
roadside  ditches  are  bailed  out  for  the  sake  of 
fishes  no  longer  than  one's  finger  "  (p.  433). 

"The  silkworms  are  eaten  after  the  cocoon 
has  been  unwound  from  them.  After  their  work 
is  done,  horses,  donkeys,  mules,  and  camels  become 
butcher's  meat.  The  cow  or  pig  that  has  died 
a  natural  death  is  not  disdained  "  (p.  433). 

"  In  Canton  dressed  rats  and  cats  are  exposed 
for  sale.  Our  boatmen  cleaned  and  ate  the  head, 
feet,  and  entrails  of  the  fowls  used  by  our  cook. 
Scenting  a  possible  opening  for  a  tannery,  the 
governor  of  Hong-Kong  once  set  on  foot  an  in- 
quiry as  to  what  became  of  the  skins  of  the 
innumerable  pigs  slaughtered  in  the  colony.  He 
learned  that  they  were  all  made  up  as  '  marine 
delicacy '  and  sold  among  the  Chinese  "  (p.  433). 

"  Haunted  by  the  fear  of  starving,  men  spend 
themselves  recklessly  for  the  sake  of  a  wage.     It 


164  THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

is  true  that  the  Chinese  are  still  in  the  handicrafts 
stage,  and  the  artisans  one  sees  busy  on  their  own 
account  in  the  little  workshops  along  the  street 
go  their  own  pace  "  (p.  435). 

"  Still  it  is  obvious  that  those  in  certain  occu- 
pations are  literally  killing  themselves  by  their 
exertions.  The  treadmill  coolies  who  propel  the 
stern-wheelers  on  the  West  River  admittedly 
shorten  their  lives.  Nearly  all  the  lumber  used 
in  China  is  hand-sawed,  and  the  sawyers  are  ex- 
hausted early.  The  planers  of  boards,  the  marble 
polishers,  the  brass-filers,  the  cotton-fluffers,  the 
treaders  who  use  the  big  rice-polishing  pestles, 
are  building  their  coffins.  Physicians  agree  that 
carrying  coolies  rarely  live  beyond  forty-five  or 
fifty.  The  term  of  a  chair-bearer  is  eight  years, 
that  of  a  rickshaw-runner  four  years ;  for  the  rest 
of  his  life  he  is  an  invalid"  (p.  435). 

"  In  Canton,  city  of  a  million  without  a  wheel 
or  beast  of  burden,  even  the  careless  eye  marks 
in  the  porters  that  throng  the  streets  the  plain 
signs  of  overstrain.  .  .  .  The  dog-trot,  the  whisthng 
breath,  the  clenched  teeth,  the  streaming  face  of 
those  under  a  burden  of  from  one  to  two  hundred- 
weight that  must  be  borne,  are  as  eloquent  of 
ebbing  life  as  a  jetting  artery.  At  rest  the  porter 
often  leans  or  droops  with  a  corpse-like  sag  that 
betrays  utter  depletion  of  vital  energy"  (p.  435). 

"There  are  a  number  of  miscellaneous  facts 
that  hint  how  close  the  masses  live  to  the  edge 
of  subsistence.  The  brass  cash,  the  most  popular 
coin  in  China,  is  worth  the  twentieth  part  of  a 
cent ;  but  as  this  has  been  found  too  valuable  to 


SOCIETY   IN   CHINA  165 

meet  all  the  needs  of  the  people,  oblong  bits  of 
bamboo  circulate  in  some  provinces  at  the  value 
of  half  a  cash"  (p.  435). 

"Incredibly  small  are  the  portions  prepared 
for  sale  by  the  huckster.  Two  cubic  inches  of 
curd,  four  walnuts,  five  peanuts,  fifteen  roasted 
beans,  twenty  melon  seeds,  make  a  portion.  The 
melon- vender's  stand  is  decked  out  with  wedges 
of  insipid  melon  the  size  of  two  fingers.  The 
householder  leaves  the  butcher's  stall  with  a 
morsel  of  pork,  the  pluck  of  a  fowl,  and  a  strip 
of  fish  as  big  as  a  sardine,  tied  together  with  a 
blade  of  grass.  .  .  .  Careful  observers  say  that 
four-fifths  of  the  conversation  among  common 
Chinese  relates  to  food.  .  .  .  Axe  and  bamboo 
are  retained  in  punishment,  and  prison  reform  is 
halted  by  the  consideration  that  unless  the  way  of 
the  transgressor  is  made  flinty,  there  are  people 
miserable  enough  to  commit  crime  for  the  bare 
sake  of  prison  fare  "  (p.  436). 

"  Here  are  people  with  standards,  unquestion- 
ably civilised,  peaceable,  industrious,  filial,  polite, 
faithful  to  their  contracts,  heedful  of  the  rights  of 
others ;  yet  their  lives  are  dreary  and  squalid,  for 
most  of  their  margins  have  been  swept  into  the 
hopper  for  the  production  of  population.  Two 
coarse  blue  cotton  garments  clothe  them.  In 
summer  the  children  go  naked,  and  the  men  strip 
to  the  waist.  Thatched  mud  hut,  no  chimney, 
smoke-blackened  walls,  unglazed  windows,  rude 
unpainted  stools,  a  grimy  table,  dirt  floors,  where 
the  pig  and  the  fowls  dispute  for  scraps,  and  for 
bed  a  mud  kang  with  a  frazzled  mat  on  it.     No 


166         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

wood,  grass,  or  flowers ;  no  wood  floors,  carpets, 
curtains,  wall-papers,  table-cloths,  or  ornaments; 
no  books,  pictures,  newspapers,  or  musical  instru- 
ments ;  no  sports  or  amusements,  few  festivals  or 
social  gatherings  ;  but  everywhere  children,  naked, 
sprawling,  squirming,  crawling,  tumbling  in  the 
dust — the  one  possession  of  which  the  poorest 
family  has  an  abundance,  and  to  which  other 
possessions  and  interests  are  fanatically  sacrificed  " 
(pp.  439-440). 

Professor  Ross's  description  reads  like  an 
account  of  a  people  who  have  reverted  to  the 
methods  of  instinctive  life.  The  deliberate  re- 
duction of  existence  to  the  lowest  level  of  possible 
endurance  suggests  to  the  Western  mind  that 
China  must  be  filled  by  a  population  that  is 
devoid  of  Reason.  Nevertheless,  no  mistake  could 
be  greater  than  that.  The  men  and  women  whose 
lives  are  spent  under  the  conditions  detailed  above 
are  possessed  of  high  ability,  and  we  venture  to 
say  that  their  average  development,  both  physical 
and  intellectual,  is  superior  to  that  of  the  average 
white  man.  In  stature  they  are  at  least  equal 
to  that  of  the  European,  and,  to  watch  a  group 
of  almost  naked  coolies  working  in  the  tropics 
is  to  see  the  mask-like  Chinese  face  set  upon 
graceful,  athletic  forms  that  might  belong  to 
Apollo  or  Hercules.  It  is  not  easy  to  find 
statistics  giving  their  cranial  capacity  as  compared 
with  others.  But  it  has  been  stated,  in  an  article 
in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  19th  January,  1883, 
that  "the  only  statistics  of  Chinese  brain- weight 
available  show  them  to  exceed  all  other  nations 


SOCIETY   IN   CHINA  167 

in  this  respect.  The  average  brain-weight  of  the 
males  reached  50^  ounces,  and  that  of  the  females 
45 1  ounces.  This  is  an  average  not  attained,  so 
far  as  yet  known,  by  any  other  nation,  it  being 
fully  6  ounces  above  that  of  the  average  negro, 
and  1 J  ounces  above  the  European." 

Intellectually  they  are  even  less  easily  esti- 
mated. Careless  of  the  State,  with  no  desire  for 
the  advance  of  scientific  knowledge,  averse  from  the 
co-operation  involved  in  the  management  of  large 
industrial  undertakings,  they  are  not  to  be  judged 
by  our  standards:  their  ideals  are  not  ours,  and 
their  thoughts  are  alien  to  us.  But,  when  a  fair 
contest  of  wits  occurs  between  a  Chinaman  and 
a  white  man,  it  is  generally  the  latter  who 
suffers. 

If  the  power  of  Reason  is  not  wanting  among 
them,  it  follows  that  the  voluntary  creation  and 
stoical  endurance  of  a  toilworn  system  of  life 
springs  from  supra-rational  considerations,  and  that 
the  sordid  social  life  of  the  Chinese  bears  witness 
to  nobility  of  individual  character.  It  is  true 
that  the  narrow  creed  leads  to  a  straitened  exist- 
ence, but  if  willingness  to  incur  supra-rational 
self-sacrifice  be  taken  as  the  measure  of  the 
religious  capacity  of  a  people,  then  the  Chinese 
must  be  classed  as  one  profoundly  moved  by  the 
sense  of  cosmocentric  duty.  We  may  see  further 
evidence  of  this  capacity  among  those  Chinese  who, 
with  a  wider  conception  of  cosmocentric  duty, 
perceive  that  all  conduct  is  significant,  and  see 
that  social  duty  and  racial  duty  are  complementary 
to  one  another,  each,  as  was  pointed  out  on  pages 


168  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

82  and  91,  coming  into  operation  at  the  point  where 
the  other  would  begin  to  be  destructive  if  it  stood 
alone.  The  faces  of  the  Chinese  Christians  often 
wear  an  expression  of  saint-like  spirituality,  and 
their  constancy  under  persecution  at  the  hands 
of  an  exclusively  racial  civilisation  has  been 
worthy  to  take  rank  by  the  side  of  that  dis- 
played by  the  Christians  of  the  Roman  Empire 
under  the  persecutions  of  an  exclusively  social 
civilisation. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  FAMILY  AND  THE  RACE  IN  CHINA 

It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  importance 
of  the  fact  that  the  formation  of  the  Chinese  family 
is  strictly  agnatic.  The  conception  of  a  direct 
ancestry  reaching  from  an  immeasurable  past, 
and  followed  by  equally  direct  lines  of  descent 
extending  to  an  incalculable  future,  is  one  that 
fires  the  imagination  and  gives  an  importance  to 
the  family  that  can  only  be  realised  faintly  and 
with  difficulty  by  any  one  who  is  merely  acquainted 
with  cognation.  But  even  this  is  not  all.  Taoism 
itself  takes  nothing  into  account  except  the  family  ; 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  requires  the  long  thin  line  of 
relationship  that  is  provided  by  agnation. 

Chinese  civilisation,  accordingly,  is  so  organised 
that  the  agnatic  family  stands  supreme,  and  every 
other  institution  is  contributory  to  it.  The  Chinese 
mind,  usually  so  incomprehensible  to  a  white  man, 
becomes  perfectly  clear  so  long  as  the  latter  re- 
members that  the  agnatic  family  is  the  beginning 
and  end  of  Chinese  thought  and  action. 

Bearing  this  in  mind,  it  is  strange  to  observe 
that  racial  duty  is  carried  out,  and  the  Race  main- 
tained and  magnified,  only  in  spite  of  enormous 
current  difficulties  and  disadvantages  created  by 
neglect  of  the  complementary  social  duties. 


170         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Thus  the  want  of  any  social  element  in  the 
Chinese  conception  of  Hiao  leads  to  the  enfeeble- 
ment  of  Society  as  a  whole,  as  well  as  to  the  im- 
poverishment of  the  individual  life.  The  State  and 
the  feeling  of  patriotism  count  for  very  little.  The 
difference  in  ideals  between  the  West  and  the  East 
is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  the  European  who 
"dies  for  his  country"  has  behaved  in  a  manner 
that  is  unintelligible  to  a  Chinaman,  because  his 
family  is  not  directly  benefited — is,  indeed,  dam- 
aged by  the  loss  of  one  of  its  members.  But  when 
a  Chinaman,  in  consideration  of  so  much  paid  to 
his  family,  consents  to  be  executed  as  a  substitute 
for  a  condemned  criminal,  and  is  held  in  honour 
for  doing  it,  then  it  is  the  white  man's  turn  to  be 
bewildered.  The  State,  in  fact,  only  exists  for  the 
sake  of  the  family,  and  is  not,  as  in  the  West, 
ancillary  to  Society.  Its  impotence,  both  at  home 
and  in  the  passing  international  politics  of  the  day, 
is  the  natural  consequence. 

To  the  same  cause  we  must  attribute  the 
Chinese  paralysis  in  scientific  research,  and  their 
failure  in  large  industrial  undertakings.  These 
phenomena  do  not  arise  from  lack  of  intellectual 
ability,  but  from  want  of  will.  In  each  form  of 
enterprise  the  reward  is  doubtful,  and,  even  at  the 
best,  is  not  confined  to  any  one  family.  They 
make  no  appeal  to  the  Chinese  mind  and  ambition. 
Learning  indeed  is  honoured,  but  the  Chinese 
classics  are  devoted  to  the  cult  of  Hiao, 

The  feebleness  of  the  State  is  the  first  source  of 
disaster.  The  Chinese  official,  for  instance,  uses 
his  office  to  enrich  his  family,  for  his  sense  of  duty 


THE   RACE   IN   CHINA  171 

extends  no  further ;  and  the  State,  even  if  it  had 
the  will,  is  too  weak  to  prevent  him  from  doing 
so.  The  result  is  that  every  kind  of  injustice  and 
maladministration  is  rife.  This,  in  its  turn,  leads 
to  a  popular  spirit  of  turbulence  that  breaks  out  at 
intervals  in  rebellion  and  civil  war.  The  racial 
destruction  that  results  is  stupendous.  Professor 
Ross  {op.  cit,)  says,  that  "  Shansi  lost  five  millions 
in  the  Mohammedan  uprising  of  the  seventies.  .  .  . 
Kan-Su,  Yunnan,  and  Kwang-Si  have  never  fully 
recovered  from  the  massacres  following  great  rebel- 
lions. ..."  The  civil  war  that  we  call  the  Tae- 
ping  Rebellion  led  to  an  amount  of  destruction 
that  defies  any  calculation  that  is  even  approxi- 
mately exact.  Beginning  in  1850  and  coming 
to  an  end  in  1864,  it  lasted  for  fourteen  years, 
and  is  estimated  to  have  cost  China  20,000,000 
to  50,000,000  of  population.  Had  such  events 
occurred  in  Europe,  the  minimum  estimate  would 
be  represented  by  the  massacre  of  all  the  inhabit- 
ants of  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  the  maximum 
would  be  more  than  equivalent  to  the  exter- 
mination of  the  entire  population  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  We  are  better  acquainted  with  the 
facts  of  the  Taeping  Rebellion  than  with  those 
of  any  other,  but  again  and  again,  Chinese  history 
is  marked  by  slaughter  on  a  huge  but  unknown 
scale.  Kiang-Se  and  Chekiang  still  show  the 
marks  of  the  Taeping  massacres,  but  all  these 
appalling  losses  make  only  a  transient  mark  on  the 
great  flood  of  Chinese  life. 

Again,  the  weakness  of  the  State  is  seen  in  the 
shocking  mortality  that  follows  in  the  train  of 


172         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

famine.  The  people  live  so  close  to  the  edge  of 
subsistence  that  there  is  practically  no  margin. 
The  bad  season  immediately  brings  starvation  upon 
the  scenes — a  contingency  for  which  no  provision 
is  made.  "  In  Shansi  thirty  odd  years  ago,"  says 
Professor  Ross  (loc.  cit,),  *' seven-tenths  of  the 
population  perished  from  famine,  and  .  .  .  Shen-Si 
.  .  .  lost  three-tenths  of  its  people  by  famine  in 
1900."  But  the  effect  of  famine  is  as  transient  as 
that  of  massacre ;  presently  the  onward  march  is 
resumed. 

The  neglect  of  science  and  sanitation  is  another 
source  of  destruction.  The  infant  mortality  is  well- 
nigh  incredible.  Professor  Ross  {loc,  cit,)  says  that 
"  Dr.  McCartney  of  Chang  -  King,  after  twenty 
years  of  practice,  estimates  that  from  seventy-five 
to  eighty-five  per  cent,  of  the  children  born  there 
die  before  the  end  of  the  second  year.  The  returns 
from  Hong-Kong  for  1900  show  that  the  number 
of  children  dying  under  one  year  of  age  is  eighty- 
seven  per  cent,  of  the  number  of  births  within  the 
year.  The  first  census  of  Formosa  seems  to  show 
that  nearly  half  of  the  children  born  to  the  Chinese 
there  die  within  six  months."  Still,  the  whole  of 
this  mortality  is  not  due  to  want  of  sanitation. 
To  quote  again  from  the  same  article :  "  Pasture 
or  meadow  there  is  none,  for  land  is  too  precious 
to  be  used  in  growing  food  for  animals.  .  .  .  The 
cows  and  water-buffaloes  never  taste  grass,  except 
when  they  are  taken  out  on  a  tether  by  an  old 
granny,  and  allowed  to  browse  by  the  woodside 
and  the  ditches,  or  along  the  terraces  of  the  rice- 
fields"  (p.  430).     *'The  use  of  milk  is  unknown 


THE   RACE   IN   CHINA  173 

in  China,  and  so  the  babe  that  cannot  be  suckled 
is  doomed  "  (p.  439). 

In  addition  to  this,  perhaps  one  female  in  ten 
is  deliberately  done  away  with  at  birth.  This  ex- 
posure of  female  infants  must  not,  however,  be 
confounded  with  the  infanticide  that  prevailed  in 
the  Roman  Empire.  Like  all  other  Chinese 
customs,  it  is  governed  by  the  interest  of  the 
family.  Until  she  is  old  enough  to  be  useful,  a 
girl  is  a  burden  on  the  resources  of  the  home; 
for,  on  her  marriage,  she  passes  entirely  out  of 
the  family  in  which  she  was  born.  The  payment 
that  her  husband  makes  on  her  wedding  repre- 
sents the  cost  of  her  upbringing,  and  so  it  depends 
on  circumstances  to  determine  whether  or  no  it  is 
to  the  family  interest  to  preserve  a  female  infant. 
Sometimes  the  same  consideration  operates  in 
another  manner.  The  writer  was  acquainted 
with  a  family  belonging  to  the  river- population. 
In  their  sampan  was  a  merry  little  girl,  no  rela- 
tion to  the  other  children,  but  living  as  one  of 
them.  Ten  or  twelve  years  before,  while  sailing 
near  the  river-bank,  the  mother  observed  a  deserted 
female  infant.  One  of  her  little  boys  was  then 
two  or  three  years  old,  and  she  rapidly  made  up 
her  mind  that  it  would  cost  less  to  rescue  and 
rear  the  infant  as  his  future  wife,  than  it  would 
to  buy  him  a  wife  eventually.  The  family  interest 
had  guided  her. 

The  result  is  that  virtually  every  girl  of  twenty 
is  married,  and  that  the  "position  of  women"  in 
China  is  assured.  As  may  be  readily  imagined, 
the  place  of  the  mother  in  an  agnatic  family  is  one 


174         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

of  much  domestic  dignity  and  honour.  Thus,  even 
the  ghastly  infant  mortality  cannot  stay  the  Chinese 
racial  progress. 

Disease  destroys  the  adult  also ;  and,  on  the 
average,  the  adult  life  is  about  fifteen  years  shorter 
than  among  ourselves.  China  is  the  abiding-place 
of  plague,  and  its  plains  are  haunted  by  ague — 
ague,  too,  that  is  not  of  a  benign  type.  In  his 
own  person  the  writer  bears  evidence  of  its  viru- 
lent and  persistent  character. 

Plague  was  destructive  in  the  Roman  Empire, 
and  the  damage  remained.  It  has  not  been  less 
destructive  in  China,  but  the  damage  is  repaired. 
The  same  remark  applies  also  to  malarial  fever. 
The  appearance  of  ague  has  been  suggested  as 
the  cause  of  the  depopulation  of  both  Greece  and 
Rome,  and  the  suggestion  has  received  the  en- 
dorsement of  one  so  eminent  as  Sir  Ronald  Ross, 
F.R.S.^  But  if  the  Greek  and  Roman  races  did 
not  recover  from  the  ravages  of  malaria,  it  was 
only  because  other  and  deeper  causes  were  at 
work.  Ague  is  but  one  of  the  many  destruc- 
tive influences  that  the  Chinese  race  defies  with 
success. 

So  immense  is  the  power  of  their  unrestricted 
birthrate  that  war,  plague,  pestilence,  and  famine 
cannot  prevail  against  it.  The  narrow  Chinese 
conception  of  cosmocentric  duty,  although  it  in- 
volves Society  in  the  horrible  conditions  that  we 


*  See  Malaria :  A  neglected  Factor  in  the  History  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
By  W.  H.  S.  Jones,  M.A.,  with  an  introduction  by  Major  Ronald 
Ross,  F.R.S.,  and  a  concluding  chapter  by  G.  G.  Ellett,  M.B. 
London :  Macmillan. 


THE   RACE   IN   CHINA  175 

have  described,  nevertheless  demonstrates  our  con- 
tention that  obedience  to  supra-rational  considera- 
tions is  successful  in  the  preservation  of  racial  life 
and  the  permanance  of  civilisation.  It  has  con- 
ferred perpetuity  upon  the  Chinese  race  and  civi- 
lisation— a  civilisation  that  has  persisted  so  long, 
and  whose  origin  is  so  remote,  that  no  chronicle 
runs  to  the  contrary.  It  confers  upon  them  to-day 
a  population  of  from  300,000,000  to  400,000,000. 
If  they  are  venerable  on  account  of  their  antiquity, 
so  also  are  they  awe-inspiring  on  account  of  their 
magnitude  and  latent  power  to-day.  They  have, 
if  they  chose  to  do  so,  only  to  lift  their  hand  to 
seize  the  hegemony  of  the  world.  But  they  do 
not  choose  to  do  so;  imperial  rule  is  not  their 
object. 

Assiduous  only  for  the  family,  to  them  is  super- 
added a  permanent  civilisation  and  the  inviolability 
of  the  race.  Thus  we  watch  them  moving,  in 
myriads  and  millions,  towards  an  end  that  they 
do  not  seek,  and  a  destiny  that  none  can  see. 

If  we  turn  to  other  examples  of  long  racial 
persistence,  w^e  find,  invariably,  that  supra- rational 
motive  occupies  a  dominant  position  in  their 
history.  We  cannot  do  more  than  make  a  brief 
reference  to  two :  the  persistence  of  the  Jew,  and 
the  long  continuance  of  the  ancient  Egyptian 
civilisation.  The  Jew,  unchanged  from  anti- 
quity, has  never  surrendered  the  expectation  that 
makes  his  race  indestructible — the  hope  that  the 
bringer  of  a  divinely  -  ordered  world  will  arise, 
sooner  or  later,  among  his  children.  The  Jewish 
Law,  quite  outspoken  on  racial  topics,  is  only  the 


176         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

expression  of  the  pathetic  vision  that  lights  up  the 
hfe  of  the  Jew. 

The  Egyptian,  his  old-world  foe,  only  survives 
in  the  Coptic  Christians  of  to-day.  Yet  we  need 
not  wonder  that  their  civilisation  remained  un- 
broken for  4000  years  and  more,  when  we  re- 
member how  large  a  space  their  religion  occupied 
in  their  lives.  And  those  who,  marvelling  and 
hushed,  have  traversed  the  pillared  solemnity  of 
Karnac  and  of  Thebes,  know  well  among  the  wall- 
sculptures,  the  oft-repeated  representation  of  Min, 
the  God  of  generation.  The  figure  of  the  phallic 
Deity,  impressive  as  it  may  be  to  a  reflective 
mind,  is  unpresentable  amid  the  proprieties  of 
to-day;  but,  to  the  Egyptian  he  was  one  of  the 
Greater  Gods.  Moreover,  he  stood  alone  among 
these  great  ones  in  that  to  sin  against  him  was 
to  draw  down  retribution.  His  emblem  is  the 
scourge.  One-armed  —  single  of  purpose  —  he 
carries  aloft  the  ever-ready  thongs. 

He  is  not  less  active  among  the  nations  of 
to-day;  those  that  incur  his  chastisement  still 
die  beneath  his  blows.  Of  the  company  of  the 
Greater  Gods  of  Egypt  there  is  one  whose  power 
has  not  waned.     He  is  Min,  the  Scourge-bearer. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   INDISPENSABLE   BASIS  OF   A   STABLE 
CIVILISATION 

"  Jesus,  upon  whom  be  Peace,  said  :  '  The  world  is  a  bridge  : 
pass  over  it,  but  do  not  build  upon  it.'" 

Inscription  on  bridge  at  Fatekpur  Sikri. 

Rome  and  China  have  furnished  us  with  illustra- 
tions of  opposite  extremes:  the  one  with  an 
example  of  social  splendour  and  racial  failure,  the 
other  with  an  example  of  social  degradation  and 
racial  persistence. 

The  conditions  that  obtained  under  the  Roman 
Empire  have  shown  that  Reason  is  deadly  to  the 
Race,  and  that  geocentric   religion   exercises   no 
^restraint  over  its  destructive  influence.     The  broad 
<f  fact  is,  indeed,  that  in  the  whole  range  of  history — 
^'  in  every  age,  and  throughout  all  the  world — there 
^  is  no  record  of  an  enduring  civilisation  that  rested 
>  on  Instinct  alone ;  on  Reason  alone ;  on  any  com- 
y  bination  of  the  two ;   or  upon  any  Religion  that 
T' served  their  purposes.     Passing,  however,  beyond 
these  agencies,  we  have  found  in  Chinese  life  an 
example   showing   the   prepotence   of  the   supra- 
rational  method  over  that  of  pure  Reason.     The 
example,  it  is  true,  is  incomplete  as  an  illustration 
of  the   whole   method   of  Religious   Motive,  for 
Tao-ism,   making  no   attempt  to   deal  with  the 


178  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

competitive  stress,  and  recognising  only  racial  duty, 
fails  socially,  and  China  is  filled  by  a  population 
that  is  brutalised  by  overcrowding,  and  rendered 
desperate  by  the  struggle  for  food.  None  the  less, 
it  has  shown  us  that  an  entirely  racial  Religion 
is  able  to  perform  its  proper  function  by  securing 
the  preservation  of  the  Race,  and  the  permanence 
of  its  civilisation,  and  that  a  sense  of  cosmocentric 
duty  is  capable  of  restraining  pure  Reason.  In 
the  whole  method  of  Religious  Motive  the  interests 
of  Society  and  of  the  Race  would  be  reconciled  by 
a  transformation  whereby  the  interest  of  each 
would  disappear  as  an  end  to  be  gained — whereby 
the  service  of  both  would  be  converted  into  the 
means  of  performing  cosmocentric  duty,  and  all 
conduct  would  be  held  significant. 

Yet  we  have  to  appeal  to  Reason  itself  to  decide 
whether  valid  grounds  for  this  transformation  are 
forthcoming  or  not.  For  the  supra-rational  method 
no  more  destroys  Reason  than  Reason  destroys 
Instinct,  or  Instinct  destroys  Reflex  Power.  Here, 
however,  we  do  not  discuss  whether  a  belief  in 
the  cosmocentric  significance  of  conduct  does  or 
does  not  stand  justified  in  the  courts  of  Reason. 
We  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  question  whether 
this,  that,  or  the  other  Religion  is  true,  false,  or 
non-proven.  All  such  inquiries  are  outside  the 
scope  of  our  work,  and  belong  to  the  domain  of 
Theology. 

Nevertheless  it  has  become  evident  that  a 
Religion  that  makes  all  conduct  of  cosmocentric 
significance  is  the  one  thing  indispensable,  and 
that  mankind  has  to  look,  in  the  first  place,  not  to 


A   STABLE   CIVILISATION        179 

the  statesman  or  the  politician,  not  even  to  the 
man  of  science,  but  to  the  theologian ;  neither 
to  Law,  nor  to  Medicine,  but  to  Divinity.  For  if, 
upon  the  one  hand,  the  cosmocentric  significance  of 
all  conduct  cannot  be  verified,  then  a  civilisation 
that  is  both  true  and  stable  cannot  be  realised. 
Upon  the  other  hand,  if  Reason  gives  us  the 
assurance  of  the  cosmocentric  significance  of  all 
conduct,  both  social  and  racial,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  then  Reason  is  not,  indeed,  destroyed,  but 
is  overcome  by  obedience :  a  lifelong  self-sacrifice 
becomes  compatible  with  it,  and  interest  is  trans- 
muted into  duty.  Then,  and  then  only,  is  it 
given  to  us  to  build  up  a  civilisation  that,  marred 
neither  by  the  racial  death  of  Rome,  nor  the  social 
death-in-life  of  China,  will  lead  us  to  limitless 
achievement. 

Yet,  even  then,  a  paradox  remains. 

In  this,  the  method  of  Religious  Motive,  that 
which  is  temporal  is  never  an  end  in  itself,  but 
becomes  only  the  means  of  expressing  the  cosmo- 
centric purpose  of  our  lives.  Thus  a  true  and 
stable  civilisation  can  never  be  more  than  a  by- 
product of  Religion.  It  is  to  be  attained  by  those 
alone  of  whom  it  is  not  sought ;  and  we  see  that, 
in  the  long  run,  the  world  belongs  to  the  un- 
worldly ;  that  in  the  end,  empire  is  to  those  to 
whom  empire  is  nothing ;  and  we  remember,  with  a 
sense  of  awe,  the  most  astonishing  of  the  Beati- 
tudes :  Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall  inherit 
the  earth. 


INDEX 

Action  : 

—  all    possibility   of   unselfish,    is  taken   away    by    common 

ownership,  80 

—  based  upon  the  faculty  of  drawing  inferences,  24,  25 

—  Chinese  thought  and,  I69 

—  cosmocentric,  attains  a  permanent  civilisation,  103 

—  course  of,  4,  18,  29 

—  forcibly  controlled  is  not  significant,  86 

—  founded  upon  a  disinterested  basis,  48,  70 

—  geocentric,  cannot  attain  a  permanent  civilisation,  103 

—  must  be  from  within  to  be  significant,  86 

—  of  racial  value  cannot  be  based  on  reason,  70 

—  of  reason  in  relation  to  competition,  36 

—  of  society,  94,  95,  98 

—  prompted  by  religious  motive,  94 

—  respiratory  centre  called  into,  10 

—  self-interested,  prompted  by  reason,  30 

—  springing  from  impulse,  30 

—  springing  from  the  inferences  of  the  individual,  30 

—  test  of  social  value  of,  QQ 

—  that  is  injurious  to  the  social  machine,  79 

—  that  of  the  trustee,  101 

—  under  the  influence  of  pure  reason,  94 

—  which  has  not  the  opportunity  of  being  controlled  by  law,  86 

—  which  may  be  self-instructive,  10 
Action  (Reflex)  : 

—  at  the  mercy  of  its  surroundings,  10 

—  development  of,  9 

—  disability  of,  10 

—  example  of  method  of,  9 

—  not  merely  useful  but  essential,  9 

—  the  first  of  the  successive  methods  of  maintaining  life,  9 
Agrippa,  143 

Akiba,  II9 
Allegiance : 

—  of  rational  individual  is  to  himself  and  to  his  work,  84 

—  of  supra-rational  individual  is  not  to  himself,  not  primarily 

to  his  work,  84 

181 


182         THE  FATE  OF   EMPIRES 

America,  3,  53 
Ancestor-worship  in  China : 

—  illustration  of,  154 

—  the  system  of,  153 
Antecedents : 

—  harmony  of  human  social  systems  with  their  own,  44 

—  necessary  to  significance  in  conduct,  82 

—  of  civilisation,  3 

—  the  determinist  is  the  creature  of,  75 
Aristotle,  149 

Arnevatn,  44 

Athene,  149 

Athenian,  110 

Athens,  5 

Augustus  Caesar,  111-114,  124,  139,  14-2,  143,  145,  146 

Aurelius  (Marcus),  3,  110,  121,  122,  124 

Australia,  146 


Babylon,  5 

Barchochebas,  119 

Bateson  (Dr.),  150 

Beatitudes,  most  astonishing  of  the,  179 

Berlin,  60 

Birthrate  : 

—  an  ever-falling,  100 

—  "  corrected,"  of  Berlin,  60 

—  decline  in,  60 

—  failure  of,  50,  53,  60 

—  France  has  the  lowest,  53 

—  power  of  controlling,  is  a  novel  racial  environment,  6l 

—  power  of  unrestricted,  174 

—  reason  in  the  matter  of  the,  62 

—  the  German,  60 

—  the  liberty  to  regulate  the,  88,  91 

—  the  racial  evils  and   dangers  attendant   upon  a  low,   32, 

56 
Bosphorus,  147 
Britain,  119 
British  Registrar-General : 

—  figures  issued  by,  53 
Brown  (Sir  J.  Crichton),  53 
Buddhism  of  China,  153 
Bureaucracy : 

—  a  despotic,  40 

—  revival  of  despotism  in  the  form  of,  3g 


INDEX  183 

C^SARS  (the),  146 

Caius  Caesar,  143 

Caligula,  118 

*'  Casarita  "  an  example  of  inability  to  draw  an  inference,  19 

Chain : 

—  of  creation,  155 

—  of  proximate  creators,  155 

—  of  worship  (in  China),  155 
Chekiang,  l7l 

Chemistry,  4 
Child : 

—  no  place  for  it  under  method  of  reason,  63 
Children : 

—  Chinese  priest's  inquiries  regarding,  154 

—  famine  of,  in  France,  64 

—  living  in  sampan  in  China,  173 

—  nurture  of,  31,  57 

—  of  the  Jews,  175 

—  Roman  laws  concerning  property  and,  141 

—  the  future  belongs  to,  31 

—  the    possession    of   legitimate,    the    qualification    for    the 

franchise,  99 
China,  107,  152,  153,  158,  l60,  l66,  I69,  173,  174,  177,  178, 

179 
Chinaman,  97 
Cicero,  127 
Civilisation : 

—  a  high,  139 

—  a  permanent,  67,  103,  112,  175 

—  a  true  and  stable,  179 

—  advance  of,  69 

—  age-long  preservation  of,  157 

—  ancient  Egyptian,  175,  l76 

—  ancient  Greek,  148 

—  antecedents  of,  3 

—  based  upon  interest,  73 

—  basis  of  permanent,  67,  74,  75,  151 

—  cannot  live  by  reason  alone,  66,  68 

—  Chinese,  110,  156,  169 

—  Chinese  race  and,  175 

—  consolidated    under    one    administration    in    the    Roman 

Empire,  123 

—  cosmocentric,  109,  115 

—  disappearance  of  Greek,  149 

—  discovery  of  underlying  principle  of,  4 

—  dominant  influence  in  that  of  the  white  man,  100 


184         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Civilisation  {continued)  : 

—  enduring,  l77 

—  enduring  in  the  East,  152 

—  ephemeral  in  direct  ratio  to  its  dependence  on  reason,  QS 

—  exclusively  racial  in  China,  l68 

—  exclusively  social  in  the  Roman  Empire,  l68 

—  founded  upon  interest  a  flat  impossibility  if  to  be   per- 

manent, 64 

—  geocentric,  108,  109,  115 

—  indispensable  basis  for  a  stable,  l77 

—  is  everyone  foredoomed  to  failure  ?  QQ 

—  maintenance  of  the  existing,  ll6 

—  measure  of  the  vitality  of  any  given,  99 

—  not  subject  to  a  fixed  law,  4 

—  of  Europe  and  America  in  the  present  day,  3 

—  one  that  would  be  marred  neither  by  the  racial  death  of 

Rome,  nor  the  social  death-in-life  of  China,  179 

—  permanence  of,  175,  178 

—  purely  geocentric  under  Roman  Empire,  122 

—  purely  rational,  foredoomed  to  decay,  28 

—  religion  as  the  basis  of,  73 

—  resting  upon  a  utilitarian  basis,  Q6',  cannot  endure,  177 

—  Roman,  109,  11 6,  122 

—  suffered  an  eclipse  that  lasted  for  a  thousand  years  after 

the  fall  of  Rome,  147 

—  supra-rational  in  character,  108 

—  that  has  already  persisted  for  a  long  time,  109,  175 

—  that  is  our  heritage,  4 

—  the  existing,  3 

—  the  highways  of,  62 

—  the  records  of  past  and  present,  107 

—  two  great  examples  of,  107 

—  unshakable  Chinese,  155 
Civilisations : 

—  all  Western,  6Q,  100,  156 

—  great  ones  of  the  West  in  the  past,  decay  of,  5 

—  struck  down  one  after  another,  QS 

—  the  records  of  past  and  present,  107 

—  two  great,  109 

Claudian  line  of  Emperors  in  ancient  Rome,  1 24 
Cleavage  between  the  interests  of  society  and  the  race,  5Q 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  102 
Coemptio,  137 
Commodus,  124 
Competition : 

—  abolition  of,  36,  79 


INDEX  185 

Competition  (continued) : 

—  abolition  of,  suggested  in  ancient  Greece,  150 

—  „         „  under  Roman  Empire,  128,  et  seq. 

—  absence  of,  39,  78 

—  all  that  the  individual  gains  by,  85 

—  among  a  multitude  of  individuals,  40 

—  among  animals,  20 

—  among  contemporaries,  31,  51 

—  an  internecine  contest,  37 

—  and  its  reverse,  84 

—  and  private  ownership,  45 

—  between  the  individual  and  society,  45 

—  between  traders  eliminated  under  the  Roman  Empire,  12.9 

—  cannot  be  got  rid  of,  except  by  getting  rid  of  that  for  which 

it  is  carried  on,  42 

—  duty  of  the  individual  with  regard  to,  86 

—  elimination  of,  39,  42 

—  entire  relief  from  the  incubus  of,  42 

—  example  of,  among  swans  in  Iceland,  44 

—  for  the  absolute  necessities  of  life,  1 6 

—  genuinely  to  the  interest  of  the  individual  to  abolish,  42 

—  how  can  it  help  ?  82 

—  impulse  to,  44,  45 

—  internecine  and  lifelong  under  the  method  of  instinct,  17 

—  is  it  in  the  power  of  the  individual  to  abolish  ?  38,  42 

—  is  it  to  his  interest  to  abolish  ?  38,  42,  49,  77 

—  life  of,  101,  133 

—  object  of  eliminating,  128 

—  objectless  under  Socialism,  43 

—  problem  of  its  abolition  under  reason,  36 

—  reward  of  success  in,  43 

—  ruthless  under  instinct,  15 

—  still  one  of  the  two  great  factors  in  the  stress  of  life,  37 

—  stimulus  of,  3Q,  41 

—  stoical  endurance  of,  108 

—  strain  caused  by,  32,  56 

—  stress  of,  l6,  32,  34,  37,  46 

—  system  of  social,  is  instinctive,  49 

—  system  of  unlimited,  77,  81 

—  the  self-seeking  of,  79 
Conduct : 

—  a  new  rule  of,  when  in  the  presence  of  the  infinite,  71 

—  a  rule  of,  75,  76 

• —  antecedents  that  are  necessary  to  significance  in,  82 

—  avoidance  of  that  which  is  injurious  to  contemporaries,  79 

—  change  from  geocentric  to  cosmocentric,  74 


186         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Conduct  (continued) : 

—  constrained  is  not  righteous,  however  right,  86 

—  cosmocentric,  75,  76,  83,  178,  179 

—  cutting  off  the  entail  of  life,  88 

—  disinterested,  63,  68 

—  each  of  the  geocentric  methods  fails  to  confer  significance 

upon,  82 

—  earthly,  when  it  becomes  an  instrument  and  not  an  end, 

76 

—  enlightened,  of  the  determinist,  75 

—  futile  to  say  that  instinct  still  governs  it,  53 

—  geocentric  motive  follows,  79 

—  individual,  in  a  socialistic  society,  80 

—  inferential,  30 

—  interest  of  rational,  68 

—  interested,  71 

—  invested  with  the  dignity  of  cosmocentric  significance,  76 

—  lawless,  and  constrained,  neither  significant,  86 

—  of  determinist  purely  geocentric,  75 

—  of  fatalist,  75 

—  possibility  of  unselfish,  79 

—  racial,  87,  89,  9I,  93,  97,  101 

—  rational,  48,  49,  68,  156 

—  significance  in,  81,  82,  86,  93,  101 

—  significant,  86,  97,  l67,  178 

—  social,  81,  85,  101 

—  social  in  China,  156 

—  that  is  of  ultimate  interest  to  the  individual,  30 

—  that  is  suitable  to  the  environment  of  religious  motive,  71 

—  that  will  be  of  racial  value,  66 

—  unselfish,  76,  79 

—  with  regard  to  the  race,  90 
Confarreatio,  137 

Confucius,  156 

Constantine,  147 

Cranial  capacity  of  Chinese  compared  with  other  races,  1 66 

Criterion  of  statesmanship,  99 

Darwin,  18,  23 
Death : 

—  a  little  thing  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Christian,  120 

—  Christian  welcoming,  as  the  entrance  to  the  world  of  his 

Redeemer,  117 

—  draws  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the  race,  50, 

52 

—  duties  in  England,  98 


INDEX  187 

Death  (continued) : 

—  individual  in  the  presence  of,  50 
in-life  of  China,  179 

—  of  a  father  is  taken  as  an  opportunity  for  plundering  his 

children,  98 

—  racial,  13 

—  racial,  of  Rome,  179 

—  Salome  asks  how  long  it  shall  prevail,  102 
Decay : 

—  all  purely  rational  civilisations  foredoomed  to,  28 

—  cause  of,  4 

—  forces  making  for,  6,  67,  108 

—  underlying  forces  making  for,  45 
Degeneration  : 

—  of  character  essential  to  smooth  working  of  non-competitive 

society,  41 
Demetrius,  128 
Despotism : 

—  a  revival  of,  in  the  form  of  bureaucracy,  39 

—  presence  of,  in  socialistic  society,  41 
Determinist : 

—  does  not  believe  that  conduct  is  pre-ordained,  75 
Development : 

—  of  reason,  10,  151 

—  of  reflex  action,  9 

—  physical  and  intellectual  in  China,  I66 

—  sudden,  of  reason  in  Greece,  150 
Diagram  : 

—  illustrating  growth  and  decay  of  civilisation,  7 

—  illustrating  the  interests  of  the  individual,  society,  and  the 

race,  35 

—  of  parallelogram  of  forces,  7 
Dill  (Sir  Samuel),  11 6,  125,  127 
Diocletian,  120,  128,  147 
Disability : 

—  arising  from  method  of  reason,  68 

—  of  merely  reflex  power  contrasted  with  instinct,  10 

—  peculiar  to  reason,  11,  67,  71 

—  second,  one  of  reflex  power,  10 

—  shared  in  common  by  reflex  power  and  instinct,  10 
Domesticated  animals  : 

—  a  pair  of  martins,  1 5 
Duties : 

—  EngUsh  death,  98 

—  social,  169 

—  social,  but  no  racial,  under  method  of  reason,  99 


188         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Duty: 

—  Chinese  sense  of,  170 

—  Christian,  152 

—  clear  region  of,  in  Taoism,  156 

—  cosmocentric,  76,  94,  167,  174,  178 

—  interest  transmuted  into,  179 

—  is  it  that  of  the  individual  to  accept  a  competitive  life  ?  77 

—  is  it  that  of  the  individual  to  adopt  a  non-competitive  life  ? 

77 

—  is  this  in  the  power  of  the  individual  ?  77,  87 

—  manner  in  which  the  individual  can  carry  out  his,  95 

—  of  significant  racial  conduct,  97 

—  of  the  individual,  74,  77,  86,  87,  96 

—  owing  to  the  race,  153 

—  racial,  92,  95,  96,  98,  l67,  I69,  178 

—  religious,  152,  153,  158 

—  social,  94-,  152,  l67 

—  society  possessed  of,  94 

—  takes  the  place  of  interest,  73 

—  the  portion  of  the  individual,  103 

—  to  the  family,  9^ 

EcHARD,  118,  119,  120,  144 
Education  ("  Higher  ") : 

—  of  women  in  America  leads  to  avoidance  of  motherhood,  53 
Egypt,  176 

Egyptians  (Gospel  according  to),  102 
Elimination  of  competition,  38,  39,  42 
Ellett  (G.  G.),  174 
Embassy : 

—  from  Marcus  Aurelius  to  China,  IO9,  110 
Empire : 

—  after  empire  struck  down  by  reason,  63 

—  an  end  in  itself  in  Rome,  122 

—  is  to  those  to  whom  empire  is  nothing,  179 

—  of  Rome,  111,  117,  120,  123,  138,  I68,  173,  174,  177 

—  Socialism  under  the  Roman,  128 

—  society  under  the  Roman,  134 

—  the  family  and  the  race  under  the  Roman,  134 
Empires : 

—  of  Rome  and  China  contemporary,  110 

—  of  the  past,  4 

—  of  this  world  nothing  to  the  Christian,  117 
England,  Socialism  and  a  falling  birthrate  in,  6I 
Entail  of  life  : 

—  continuance  of,  51,  52,  53,  6 1,  88,  89 


INDEX  189 

Entail  of  life  (conthmed)  : 

—  interest  of  the  individual  to  break,  under  method  of  reason, 

52 

—  law  of,  92 

—  must  not  be  selfishly  broken,  92,  102 

—  power  to  break,  53j  6I,  92 
Environment : 

—  change  of,  under  Socialism,  43 

—  created  by  inborn  impulse,  70 

—  created  by  instinct,  62,  70 

—  created  by  reason,  70,  71 

—  created  by  reflex  power,  70 

—  new  racial,  created  by  power  to  control  birthrate,  61-63 

—  of  interest  of  society,  70 

—  of  life  widened  by  each  successive  method,  69 

—  of  limitless  wastefulness  under  instinct,  62 

—  quite  different  under  each  new  method,  62 

—  relation  of  reason  to  its  own,  70 

—  that  does  not  admit  of  further  extension,  70,  71 

—  that  is  not  earthly,  71 

—  the  new,  of  religious  motive,  71 
Environments : 

—  several,  70 
Ephesus,  128 
Eugenic  measures  : 

—  immediate  success  of,  151 

—  modern  study  of,  151 

—  probably  adopted  in  ancient  Greece,  150,  151 
Europe,  3,  53,  100,  l7l 

Experience : 

—  a  word  of  no  meaning  to  the  plant,  1 8 

—  among  Arctic  foxes,  24 

—  cannot  dictate  to  the  purely  instinctive  animal,  18 

—  of  no  value  without   the   power  of  drawing   inferences, 

20 

—  we  have  no,  of  the  efforts  whereby  life  is  maintained  in 

the  animal  world,  30 

Family  : 

—  agnatic,  134,  136,  I69,  173 

—  among  many  and  various  peoples  is  regarded  with  venera- 

tion, 97 

—  and  the  faith  among  the  Chinese,  97 

—  and  the  race  in  China,  I69 

—  and  the  race  under  the  Roman  Empire,  134 

—  as  a  link  between  society  and  the  race,  96 


190  THE  FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

Family  (continued) : 

—  as  an  institution  attacked  by  death  duties,  QS 

—  belonging  to  the  river  population  in  China,  173 

—  Chinese  assiduous  only  for  the,  175 

—  Chinese  girl  passes  entirely  out  of  her  own,  on  marriage, 

173 

—  Chinese   workman    returns    to   his,   after   serving   labour 

association,  159 

—  cognatic  form  of,  134,  136,  139 

—  descent  of  agnatic  family  absolutely  direct,  1 36 

—  duty  to  the,  is  duty  to  the  race,  96 

—  events  connected  with,  are  of  racial  import,  97 

—  fortune,  and  the  Lex  Sumptuaria,  142 

—  ignored  in  the  polling-booth,  QQ 

—  importance  to  the  Chinese,  I69 

—  in  contact  with  the  race  under  agnation,  137 

—  in  contact  with  society  under  cognation,  136 

—  interest,  and  the  destruction  of  female  infants  in  China,  173 

—  not  directly  benefited  when  the  father  gives  up  his  life  for 

his  country,  170 

—  possesses  an  importance  which  extends  beyond  its  thres- 

hold, 98 

—  preservation  of,  under  Taoism,  156 

—  racial  duty  is  focussed  upon  the,  98 

—  religious    veneration   of,  leading   to    submission   to    racial 

stress,  109 

—  rewards  to  render  fashionable,  in  Roman  Empire,  142 

—  so  much  paid  to  that  of  Chinaman  who  takes  the  place  of 

criminal  condemned  to  death,  170 

—  society  the  protector  of,  98 

—  State  only  exists  for,  108,  IO9,  170 

—  supplanted  by  municipality  in  Roman  Empire,  1 26 

—  Taoism  takes  nothing  into  account  except,  I69 

—  the  agnatic,  stands  supreme  in  China,  I69 

—  the   coming  generations  of  the,  and  the  purely  rational 

individual,  51 

—  the  disappearance  of  the,  and  the  race,  51 

—  the  form  of,  among  white  men,  136 

—  the  form  of,  among  yellow  men,  1 36 

—  the  franchise  an  appurtenance  of,  ^^ 

—  the  life  of,  is  longer  than  that  of  the  individual,  shorter 

than  that  of  the  race,  96 

—  the  nexus  between  the  individual  and  the  race,  98 

—  the  nexus  between  society  and  the  race,  99 

—  to  strengthen  the,  is  the  aim  of  all  right  social  action,  99 

—  two  forms  of,  134 


INDEX  191 

Family  (continued) : 

—  under  the  Roman  Empire,  134,  137-139 

—  wife  leaves  hers,  and  passes  under  that  of  her  husband, 

136,  137 
Fatalist: 

—  believes  that  all  conduct  is  preordained,  75 
Fate : 

—  of  present  civilisation  of  Europe  and  America,  3 
Fatehpur  Sikri,  inscription  on  bridge  at,  177 

Firth  (J.  B.),  Ill,  113,  114 
Flaw  : 

—  can  we  discover  any  underlying  the  methods  which  have 

failed  to  secure  permanence  ?  l7 

—  in  instinct,  destructiveness  of,  20 

—  lies  in  the  method  of  instinct,  1 8 

—  method  of  reason  should  have  none  that  is  inherent,  28 

—  that  involves  the  wastefulness  of  the  method  of  instinct,  I9 

—  to  make  good  the  one  in  the  previous  method,  83 

—  underlying  instinct,  17,  20 
Force : 

—  authority  of  cosmocentric  motive  a  decaying,  100 

—  making  for  decay,  5,  67,  108 

—  making  for  growth,  5,  67,  108 
Forces : 

—  constructive  and  destructive  in  civilisation,  4,  5 

—  history  gives  resultant  of,  5,  6,  101 

—  magnitude  of,  in  civilisation,  5 

—  parallelogram  of,  5,  7 

—  that  have  been  in  operation  from  the  very  beginning,  6 

—  themselves  must  be  constants,  5 

—  those  that  we  are  seeking,  6 

—  two  component,  6 

—  underlying,  discovery  of  the,  45 
France,  53,  6I,  63 

Franchise : 

—  an  appurtenance  of  the  family,  99 
Fung-Shui,  153 

Future : 

—  believed  by  fatalist  to  be  foreordained,  75 

—  building  up  the,  burden  of,  52 

—  generations  of  the,  32,  33,  49,  56 

—  in  which  the  individual  has  no  part,  13,  51 

—  no  mark  left  upon  it  by  those  who  die  before  the  age  of 

parenthood  is  reached,  16 

—  not  petrified  by  an  external   fiat,  according  to  belief  of 

determinist,  75 


192  THE  FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

Future  {continued) : 

—  provision  for,  needless  to  society,  36 

—  provision  that  is  of  significance  in  the,  97 

—  the  dim,  and  the  individual,  95 

—  the  living  of  the,  linked  to  those  of  the  present,  96 

Gap; 

—  in  instinct,  23 

—  left  by  instinct  is  filled  by  reason,  70 

—  left  by  reflex  action  is  filled  by  instinct,  70 
Generation : 

—  Min,  the  god  of,  (ancient  Egypt),  176 

—  one  after  the  other  influences  civilisation  by  the  course  of 

action  that  it  takes,  4 

—  one  after  the  other  takes  up  the  labour  of  instinctive  re- 

production, 15 
Generations : 

—  future,  provision  of,  in  absence  of  competition,  32 

—  past  and  future,  linked  in  agnatic  family,  136 

—  provision  of  future,  49,  56 

—  the  coming,  34,  51,  52,  88,  155 

—  unborn,  and  definition  of  terms  "  society  "  and  "  race,"  SS 

—  unoccupied  areas  await  the  coming,  31 
Germanicus,  124 

Germany,  60,  6I 

Gibbon,  115,  II6,  117,  II9,  121,  139,  146 
Greece  (ancient),  148-151,  174 
Growth : 

—  force  making  for,  6,  67,  108 

—  of  reason,  83 

—  promise  of  indefinite,  under  method  of  religious  motive,  71 

—  relative  rate  of,  of  instinct  and  reason,  27 

—  underlying  forces  making  for,  45 

Hadrian,  II9 

Hegemony  of  world  could  be  seized  by  China,  175 

—  of  world  lately  held  by  French,  64 
Heliogabalus,  125,  146 

Heredity : 

—  the   secrets   of,  do   not   contain   the  basis  of  permanent 

civilisation,  151 
Hiao  : 

—  Chinese  classics  devoted  to  the  cult  of,  170 

—  cult  leads  to  the  enfeeblement  of  society,  170 

—  meaning  of,  135 

—  no  social  influence,  156 


INDEX  193 

Hiatus  between  interest  of  society  and  the  race,  58,  71 
Historians : 

—  Chinese,  IO9 

—  the  ancientj  and  the  Roman  Emperors,  124 
History : 

—  a  resultant  of  forces,  5 

—  Chinese,  134,  l7l 

—  components  of,  107 

—  different  course  might  have  been  taken  by,  65 

—  does  not  give  the  direction  of  its  components,  107 

—  European,  100,  126 

—  failures  recorded  in,  35 

—  of  ancient  Greek  civilisation,  148 

—  of  persecutions,  120 

—  of  the  growth  of  reason,  83 

—  of  the  temporary  renascence  achieved  by  Augustus  in  the 

Roman  Empire,  112 

—  recorded,  5,  6,  28,  29,  101 

—  reports  only  the  end  of  the  journey  of  organic  advance,  6 

—  Roman,  134 

—  showing  a  non-competitive  system,  132 

—  supra-rational  motive  occupies  a  dominant  position  in  ex- 

amples of  long  racial  persistence,  175 

—  the  shadows  of,  28 

—  the  splendour  of  man's  achievements  shines  in,  28 
Horace,  50 

Horror : 

—  followed    upon    horror   during    the    persecutions    of    the 

Christians  in  Rome,  120 

—  inspired  by  socialistic  conditions  of  life,  38 

—  of  socialistic  conditions  of  life  justified,  79 

—  racial  conditions  of  Roman  society  excite,  123 
Hostility : 

—  between  the  interests  of  the  individual  and  the  race,  52 

—  essential  between  reason  and  instinct,  83 

—  persists  also  between  the  race  and  society,  59 

—  reason  not  concerned  to  avert,  52 

—  Roman  Emperors  never  excited  any  in   their  subjects  by 

their  conduct,  125 

—  to  non-competitive  life,  81 

Iceland,  44 

Ideals  of  goodness    set   up   by  the  moralists   of  the    Roman 

Empire,  128 
Illustration : 

—  historical,  107,  ei  seq. 

N 


194         THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Illustration  (continued)  : 

—  of  coincidence  of  revolt  against  social  and  racial  stresses,  60 

—  of  conditions  of  growth  and  decay,  7 

—  of  defence  of  the  rights  of  property  in  the  animal  world, 

—  of  difference  between  West  and  East,  170 

—  of  individual  ownership,  44 

—  of  opposite  extremes  found  in  Rome  and  China,  177 

—  of  principle  of  significance  in  conduct,  102 

—  of  the  flaw  in  the  method  of  instinct,  1 8 

—  of  the  manner  in  which  a  high  civilisation  can  be  attained, 

139 

—  of  the  movement  in  the  direction  of  the  power  of  drawing 

inferences,  23 

—  of  the  whole  method  of  religious  motive,  177 

—  of  triangle  of  interests  of  the  individual,  society,  and  the 

race,  55 

—  use  of  parallelogram  of  forces  as  an,  5 
Impulse : 

—  actions  springing  from,  their  relation  to  reason,  30 

—  gratification  of,  13,  14,  29,  68 

—  inborn  and  unquestionable,  of  instinct,  14,  18 

—  of  racial  value  acts  by  gratification  of  individual,  70 

—  purely  instinctive  animal  dominated  by,  14 

—  race  acting  by  means  of  instinctive,  29 

—  that  would  spring  into  useful  action  in  every  emergency, 

26 

—  to  competition,  44,  45 

—  under  control  of  reason,  27 
Inborn  impulses : 

—  environment  created  by,  is  that  of  the  individual,  70 

—  foregone  conclusions  of,  29,  84 

—  gratification  of,  instinct  knows  no  more  than,  1 0,  1 5 

—  inherited,  12,  13,  17 

—  instinctive  animal  unable  to  do  more  than  follow,  62 

—  method  of,  70 

—  of  instinct,  10,  12,  70 

—  possession  of,  10,  70 

—  purely  reflex  world  knows  nothing  of,  30 

—  self-sacrifice  due  to,  77 
Individual : 

—  a  servant  under  the  method  of  religious  motive,  84 
advantage  of,  decides  between  claims  of  society  and  the 

race,  35 

—  alone  with  the  race  in  the  region  of  instinct,  33 

—  as  an  instrument  of  the  race,  29 


INDEX  195 

Individual  (continued) : 

—  attitude  of  the,  towards  the  race,  95 

—  can   only   escape   from  the  racial  stress  by  avoidance  of 

parenthood,  58 

—  can  serve  the  race,  9^ 

—  Chinese  religion  serves  no  purpose  of,  156 

—  competition  between  him  and  society,  45 

—  condemned  by  method  of  instinct,  17 

—  conflict  between  the,  and  society,  47 

—  death  draws  distinction  between  the,  and  the  race,  52 

—  definite  disadvantage  to,  under  method  of  instinct,  15 

—  diagram  of  interests  of  society,  the  race,  and,  35,  55 

—  divergence  between  his  interests  and  those  of  the  race,  56 

—  divided  from  society  by  competitive  stress,  34 

—  does  reason  confer  upon  him  the  power  to  act  in  his  sole 

interest?  53 

—  duty  of  the,  with  regard  to  the  race,  87 

—  equal  to  society,  55 

—  greater  than  the  race,  54,  55 

—  has  but  a  brief  span  of  life  in  comparison  with  the  race,  50 

—  held  in  subjection  to  the  race  under  method  of  instinct,  17 

—  hostility  between  his  interests  and  those  of  the  race,  52 

—  how  does  he  fare  under  the  method  of  instinct?   14 

—  identification  of  his  interest  with  that  of  society,  55,  57 

—  if  he  lived  as  long  as  the  race,  50 

—  if  society  takes  the  place  of,  56 

—  impelled  by  instinct  to  the  care  of  the  young  of  the  species, 

14 

—  in  contact  with  the  race,  33,  34 

—  in  relation  to  the  creative  principle  of  the  universe,  155 

—  incurs  stress  of  competition,  34 

—  instinct  does  not  necessarily  act  to  his  advantage,  29 

—  instinct  leaves  no  judgment  to  the,  14 

—  instinct  secures  his  subordination  to  the  race,  14,  25 

—  instinct  subjects  him  to  social  competition,  49 

—  interaction  of  his  interests  with  those  of  society  and  the 

race,  33,  34 

—  interest  of,  30,  32-34,  42,  46,  48,  55,  95 

—  interest  of,  in  relation  to  unborn  generations,  34 

—  interest  of  society  and,  34,  36,  37,  42,  50,  56,  94 

—  interest  of  the  race  and,  34,  54,  56,  59 

—  is  it  his  duty  to  adopt  a  non-competitive  life  ?  77 

—  is  it  his  duty  to  carry  the  multiplication  of  the  race  to  its 

utmost  limits?  87 

—  is  it  his  duty  to  perpetuate  conditions  of  strife  ?  77 

—  is  it  to  his  interest  to  abolish  competition  ?  38,  48,  49,  77 


196         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Individual  (continued)  : 

—  is  it  to  his  interest  to  break  the  entail  of  life  ?  52 

—  is    it   to   his   interest  to  decline  the   provision  of  future 

generations  ?  49 

—  is  it  within  his  power  so  to  frame  his  life  that  his  conduct 

shall  be  of  cosraocentric  significance  ?  81,  87,  90 

—  is  it  within  his  power  to  avoid  the   racial  a-morality  of 

instinct  and  immorality  of  reason  ?  89,  90 

—  is  it  within  his  power  to  avoid  the  social  immorality  of 

instinct  and  a-morality  of  reason?  81 

—  lines  indicated  by  interest  of,  32 

—  lives  in  the  presence  of  an  ever-approaching  death,  50 

—  logical  position  of,  vis-d-vis  to  the  race,  58 

—  marriage  an  act  of  madness  on  the  part  of  a  rational,  58,  96 

—  method  of  instinct  costly  to,  1 7 

—  minimum  of  reproduction  on  the  part  of,  57 

—  moral  position  in  the  absence  of  competition  and  in  a  world 

wherein  all  property  would   be  vested  in  society,  and 
nothing  would  be  owned  by  him,  78 

—  moved  only  by  interest,  51 

—  mutual  dependence  of  himself,  society,  and  the  race,  94? 

—  nature  inflicts  no  penalty  on,  for  childlessness,  51 

—  racial  conduct  of,  97 

—  racial  duty  of,  its  cosmocentric  importance,  92  ;  transmuted 

into  duty  to  family,  96 

—  rational  interests  of,  35 

—  rational  relations  of  society  and  the,  55 

—  rational  relations  of  the  race  and  the,  55 

—  reason  at  the  service  of  the,  29,  34,  55 

—  sacrificed  without  mercy  under  method  of  instinct,  15,  17, 

88 

—  secures  for  the  race  a  future  in  which  he  has  no  part,  13 

—  self-sacrifice  of,  available  under  method  of  religious  motive, 

73 

—  separated  from  the  race,  but  not  from  society,  34 

—  stresses  that  bear  upon  the,  32,  56 

—  strife  between  society  and,  37 

—  subjection  of,  to  society,  85 

—  subjection  of,  to  the  interest  of  the  race,  48 

—  subjection  of,  to  the  race  under  religious  motive,  92 

—  subordination  to  the  race  under  method  of  instinct,  14,  15 

—  supreme  power  passes  from  the  race  to,  under  method  of 

reason,  30 

—  the  duty  of,  is  clear  under  method  of  religious  motive,  86, 

96 

—  the  purview  of,  future  of  race  far  removed  from,  95 


INDEX  197 

Individual  {continued) : 

—  the  term  needs  no  definition,  32 

—  the  transitory,  13 

—  to  him  it  makes  no  difference  whether  the  stress  falls  upon 

him   as   the   father   of  a   family,  or  as  a  citizen   of  a 
socialistic  society,  58 

—  under  the  influence  of  religious  motive,  92,  103 
Individuals : 

—  acting  in  social  concert,  94,  95 

—  existing  sum  of,  constitutes  '^  society,"  33 
Inference  : 

—  "casarita"  had  not  the  faculty  of  drawing,  20 

—  man  acts  upon,  drawn  from  observation,  31 
Inferences : 

—  action  springing  from,  appears  under  method  of  reason,  30 

—  advantage  of  power  of  drawing,  2Q 

—  faculty  of  drawing,  I9,  25 

—  fox  able  to  draw  several,  24 

—  lack  of  the  power  of  drawing,  leads  to  wastefulness  of  life, 

19-21,  62 

—  movement   in    the    direction   of  acquiring   the   power   of 

drawing,  22 

—  power  of  drawing,  10,  12,  20,  26,  28,  29 

—  purely  instinctive  animal  knows  nothing  of,  30 

—  rational  individual  draws  his  own,  29 
Inge  (Dr.),  115,  118,  132,  138,  139,  141 
Inscription  on  bridge  at  Fatehpur  Sikri,  l77 
Instinct : 

—  a  new  faculty  arises  to  remedy  the  defect  of,  24 

—  a  stereotyped  inheritance,  29 

—  action  springing  from  impulse   stands  to  it  as  inferential 

conduct  does  to  reason,  30 

—  advantage  wholly  to  the  race,  15 

—  advantages  and  limitations  of,  12 

—  alone  speaks  in  the  imperative  mood  to  an  animal,  18 

—  and  reason  pull  in  opposite  directions,  49 

—  appearance  of  method  of,  supplements  reflex  power,  70 

—  arose  and  survived,  conditions  under  which,  62 

—  as  a  modus  Vivendi  between  the  transitory  and  the  perma- 

nent, 13,  17 

—  as  contrasted  with  reflex  power,  10 

—  avoidance  of  wastefulness  of,  by  means  of  reason,  24 

—  '^casarita"  obedient  to,  I9,  20 

—  character  of  method  of,  90,  92 

—  comparison  of  method  with  that  of  reason  and  of  religious 

motive,  28,  29,  74 


198         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Instinct  (continued) : 

—  condemns  individuals  to  die  in  myriads,  17 

—  definition  of,  12 

—  does  not  destroy  reflex  power,  l78 

—  does  not  touch  reason,  28 

—  element  of  liberty  in  method  of,  85 

—  essentially  a  property  of  the  race,  29 

—  ever-increasing  power  of  reason  as  compared  with,  27 

—  example  of  the  limitation  of,  1 9 

—  excluded  by  reason,  83 

—  flaw  in,  17,  20,  24 

—  furnishes  law  against  anarchy  of  method  of  reason,  91 

—  futile  to  say  it  still  governs  conduct,  53 

—  gap  in,  filled,  23 

—  gratification  of  impulse  of,  13,  27,  68 

great  as  are  its  advantages  it  does  not  provide  any  escape 
from  the  stress  of  competition,  1 8 

—  held  in  the  leash  of  reason,  49 

—  history  a  complex  of  reason,  religious  motive,  and,  29 

—  history  of  the  overthrow  of,  83 

—  hostility  of  the  race  to  the  individual  is  masked  by,  52 

—  how  far  is  the  interest  of  the  individual  consulted  under 

this  method?  14 

—  how  has  it  answered  the  problem  ?  1 3 

—  illustration  of  method  of,  1 8-20 

—  impossibly  cumbrous  if  asked  to  provide  for  every  change 

of  environment,  26 

—  impulses  of,  63 

—  inability  to  deal  with  competitive  stress,  72 

—  individuals  impelled  by  it  to  the  care  of  the  young  of  the 

species,  14 

—  its   racial  a-morality  precludes    its  adoption  by   religious 

motive,  89 

—  knows  nothing  but  immediate  impulse,  10,  13 

—  leaves  no  judgment  to  the  individual,  14 

—  limitless  wastefulness  of  this  method  is  reduced  by  reason,  38 

—  method  of,  12,  13,  26,  29,  67,  72,  76,  77,  87,  88 

—  no  record  of  an  enduring  civilisation  that  rested  on  this 

alone,  177 

—  obeyed  just  as  blindly  as  reflex  action,  10 

—  outruns  the  limits  of  possible  sustenance,  l6,  30 

—  parental,  14 

—  parents  the  tools  of,  15 

—  power  of  rational  action  superadded  to,  25 

—  power  to  control  birthrate  absent  under  method  of,  6l 

—  purely  an  appurtenance  of  the  race,  14 


INDEX  199 

Instinct  (continued)  : 

—  racial  a-morality  of,  88,  90,  92,  103 

—  reason  does  not  destroy,  178 

—  reason  does  not  exist  apart  from,  28 

—  reason  the  predominant  partner   in  the  association  with, 

27,  38,  46 

—  reason  will  overtake,  27 

—  reliance  on,  in  respect  of  reproduction,  49 

—  social  chaos  of  the  method  of,  82 

—  social  immorality  of,  81,  85,  88,  103 

—  strong  though  it  is,  it  has  fallen  into  the  toils  of  reason,  53 

—  subjects  the  individual  to  competition,  49 

—  succeeds  reflex  action,  9,  62 

—  supersessiqn  of,  by  reason,  30 

—  tendency  towards  perfection  of  the  method  of,  26 

—  the  constraint  that  ensures  the  continuance  of  the  entail  of 

life  is  absolute  under  this  method,  52 

—  the  enemy  of  society,  83 

—  the  flaw  lies  in  its  wastefulness,  17 

—  the  servant  of  the  race,  83 

—  tyranny  of,  15 

—  unable  to  dominate  its  environment,  62 

—  useful  inborn  impulses  of,  70 

—  wanes  while  reason  waxes,  49 

—  wastefulness  of,  19-21,  37,  62,  63 

—  what  are  its  advantages  and  disadvantages?   13,  14 

—  what  is  the  common  element  of  failure  in  methods  of  reflex 

action,  reason,  and  ?  68 

—  would  come  into  its  own  again  when  reason  becomes  self- 

destructive,  83 
Instincts : 

—  operation  of  two,  1 5 
Interest : 

—  all  unknown  to  purely  instinctive  animal,  1 2 

—  arguments  put  forward  on  the  grounds  of,  39,  40 

—  blank  which  separates  that  of  the  race  from  that  of  society, 

71 

—  civilisation  founded  upon,  is  a  flat  impossibility,  64 

—  duty  takes  the  place  of,  under  method  of  religious  motive,  73 

—  family,  among  Chinese,  173 

—  how  does  death  affect  ?  50 

—  in  carrying  on  the  race,  56 

—  instinct  acting  in  that  of  the  race,  29 

—  interaction  of  that  of  the  individual  with  that  of  society 

and  the  race,  33 

—  is  dominant  under  reason,  126 


200         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Interest  {continued) : 

—  most  complete  expression  of,  is  to  be  found  in  a  socialistic 

form  of  society,  47,  63 

—  necessary  disappearance  of  any  civilisation  based  upon,  73 

—  of  a  socialistic  society  identical  with  that  of  the  individual, 

46,57 

—  of  all  the  living  to  break  the  entail  of  life,  62 

—  of  every  individual  to  eliminate  competition  from  life,  42 

—  of  society,  57,  70,  98,  156 

—  of  society  and  the  race,  58,  64 

—  of  the  individual,  14,  30,  32-34,  40,  45,  51,52,  54,  79,  9*, 

95,  178 

—  of  the  individual  and  society,  42,  46,  47,  50,  55,  57 

—  of  the  individual  and  the  race,  52,  68 

—  of  the  individual  in  regard  to  competition,  42,  48,  49,  77 

—  of  the  race,  14,  SQ,  5^^  6l 

—  of  votaries  not  considered  by  Chinese  religion,  156 

—  pure  reason  does  not  subordinate  its  owner  to  any  consi- 

deration outside,  29,  30 

—  purely  and  inevitably  a  matter  of,  in  a  socialistic  society,  78 

—  race  acting  in  its  own,  by  means  of  instinct,  29 

—  rational,  51 

—  reason  acting  in  that  of  the  individual,  30,  55,  94 

—  reconciliation  of  that  of  the  individual  with  that  of  society, 

60 

—  sacrifice  of  private,  impossible  in  socialistic  society,  79 

—  subordination  of  that  of  the  individual  to  that  of  the  race,  68 

—  temporal,  is  nothing  under  method  of  religious  motive,  72 

—  the  only  guiding  principle  under  reason,  71 

—  transmuted  into  duty,  l79 

—  ultimate,  of  the  individual,  30 
Interests : 

—  geocentric,  95 

—  identity  of,  of  individual  and  society,  58 

—  of  the  individual  and  the  race,  52,  54-56,  59 

—  relative,  of  society  and  the  race,  S5,  50,  55,  64,  65,  l78 

—  relative,  of  the  individual  and  society,  34,  SQ^  56 

—  relative,  of  the  individual  and  the  race,  34,  48 

—  respective,  of  society  and  the  race,  98,  146 

—  respective,  of  the  race  and  the  individual,  50 

—  those  of  society  and  the  individual  will  not  be  at  variance 

if  both  are  confined  within  the  same  space  of  time,  SQ 

—  triangle  of,  55 

—  whither  do  they  lead  with  regard  to  stress  of  competition 

and  stress  of  reproduction  ?  32 
Italy,  112,  146,  147 


INDEX  201 

Jew  (the),  110,  117,  119,  175,  176 

Jews  (the),  119 

Jones  (W.  H.  S.),  174 

Julia.     See  Lex 

Julius  Caesar,  111 

Julius  Severus,  119 

Justinian,  139 

Juvenal,  127,  128 

Karnac,  176 
Keble,  S 
Kiang-Se,  171 

Labour  exchanges  in  China,  l60 

Lactantius,  147 

Lankester  (Sir  E.  Ray),  15,  20,  22 

Law: 

—  all  social,  excluded  under  method  of  instinct,  82 

—  and  liberty,  86,  90,  92,  102 

—  element  of,  belongs  to  method  of  reason,  82 

—  enjoins  that  the  entail  should  not  be  broken,  102 

—  failed  in  its  purpose  in  ancient  Rome,  143 

—  instinct  furnishes  racial,  91 

—  itself  essential  to  significance,  92 

—  method  of  religious  motive  retains,  92 

—  none  in  unlimited  competition,  77 

—  not  permitted  to  become  a  dead  letter  in  Roman  Empire, 

143 

—  obedience   to  the,  only    significant    when  liberty    is   also 

possessed,  92 

—  of  entail  of  life,  92 

—  of  inheritance  under  Augustus,  141 
- —  of  non- competitive  method,  85 

—  of  the  one  and  liberty  of  the  other  method,  9 1 

—  reason  furnishes  social,  82 

—  retention  of  the  element  of,  85 

—  that  justifies  the  existence  of  the  individual,  92 

—  the  Jewish,  175 

—  the  opportunity  of  being  controlled  by,  86 

—  under  which  the  individual  has  come  into   possession  of 

life,  92 

—  unselfish  liberty  would  take  the  place  of,  102 
Lawlessness : 

—  the  very  height  of,  89 
Lex: 

—  de  adulteriis,  142,  143 


202         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Lex  {continued) : 

—  de  maritandis  ordinihus,  141 

—  Julia,  141-143 

—  Pappia  Poppcea,  142,  143 
Limpet : 

—  as  an  illustration  of  the  method  of  reflex  action,  9 
Literature  (Roman),  127 

Long  (George),  121 
Lucius  Caesar,  143 

Machine  (great  Roman)  provided  a  socialistic  existence,  133 
Machinery : 

—  for  significance  in  racial  conduct,  QS 

—  for  significant  social  conduct,  86 

—  reciprocating,  of  a  method  of  religious  motive,  83 

—  that  is  perfect  both  socially  and  racially,  103 
Maine  (Sir  Henry),  74,  1 35 

Man  : 

—  advance  from  protozoal  organism  to,  9 

—  at  the  head  of  the  organic  world,  28 

drawing  an  inference  from  his  observation  is  able  to  make 
use  of  the  processes  of  nature,  31 

—  pre-eminently  the  reasoning  animal,  27 

—  to  him  the  two  stresses  of  life  remain  unaltered,  31 
Marcus  Aurelius.     See  Aurelius 

Marriage : 

—  an  act  of  madness  in  a  purely  rational  individual,  52,  58, 96 

—  Chinese  conditions  of,  173 

—  "higher"  education  of  women  in  America  leads  to  avoid- 

ance of,  53 

—  in  the  Roman  Empire,  137,  138,  141,  142 

—  that  has  not  received  religious  sanction  is  regarded  with 

doubt  and  contempt,  97 

—  under  agnatic  conditions,  136 

—  under  religious  motive,  ^6 
Marry  (to)  : 

—  the  great  racial  act  of  a  man's  lifetime,  52 
Martial,  127,  128 

Matrimony  : 

—  aversion  from,  under  Roman  Empire,  138 
Method.     See  Instinct,  Reason,  and  Religious  Motive 
Mill  (J.  S.),  64 

Miocene  period,  7 
Mithraism,  115,  II6 
Mohammedans,  97 
Montesquieu  (de),  142 


INDEX  203 


Motive.    See  Religious 
Musonius,  127 


Nationalisation  of  property,  43 
Nazarene,  9? 
Nero,  120,  124,  125,  145 
Newsholme  (Arthur,  M.D.),  60 

Ovid,  112 

Pandataria,  143 
Parallelogram  of  forces,  5,  7 
Parentage : 

—  selection  for,  in  ancient  Greek  life,  151 
Parenthood : 

—  avoidance  of,  alone  can  remove  the  stress  of  reproduction, 

58 

—  self-sacrifice  involved  in,  54 
Parents : 

—  are  but  tools  under  the  method  of  instinct,  15 

—  exercise  of  the  franchise  should  be  the  joint  act  of  two,  99 

—  instinct  subordinates  them  to  the  care  of  the  young,  l6 

—  must  hunt  for  the  insatiable  young  in  the  animal  world, 

15 

—  of  the  generations  to  come  incur  the  stress  of  reproduc- 

tion, 51 

—  only  one  pair  of  young  can  succeed  to  the  position  of,  in 

the  animal  world,  l6 

—  the  life  of,  under  method  of  instinct,  1 5 
Paul  (St.),  128 

Petrie  (Prof  Flinders),  128,  130,  132,  159 
Petronius,  127,  128,  141 
Pharaohs : 

—  Chinese  contemporary  with  the,  110 
Phenomena : 

—  similarity  of,  in  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  149 

—  socialistic,  50,  60,  108 

—  twin.  Socialism  and  a  failure  of  the  birthrate  are,  6l 
Phenomenon  : 

—  an   intermittent,    civilisation    resting   on   utilitarian    basis 

is,  66 

—  of  Chinese  paralysis  in  scientific  research,  170 
Physics,  4 

Plato,  149 
Pliny,  127 
Portugal,  171 


204         THE   FATE  OF  EMPIRES 

Power  : 

—  assumption  of,  by  the  State,  108 

—  called  into  action  by  external  stimulus,  9 

—  concentrated  upon  one  point,  in  Taoism,  156 

—  conferred  by  reason,  27,  57 

—  disability  of  merely  reflex,  10 

—  inherent  in  religious  motive,  76,  84 

—  latent,  of  the  Chinese,  175 

—  need   of  one  that  can  act  independently  of  a  stimulus, 

69 

—  of  drawing  a  conclusion  from  premisses,  27 

—  of  drawing  inferences,  10,  12,  20,  22,  28,  70 

—  of  husband  in  Rome,  1 37 

—  of  inborn  instinctive  action,  24 

—  of  involuntary  response  to  an  external  stimulus,  9^  69 

—  of  '^  looking  before  and  after,"  29 

—  of  rational  action,  24,  27 

—  of  reason,  27,  37,  45,  48,  49,  62,  92,  l67 

—  of  reasoning,  20 

—  of  religious  motive,  76,  77,  84,  86,  87,  92 

—  of  seeking  the  good  of  contemporaries,  79 

—  of  self-sacrifice,  72 

—  of  the  individual,  32,  43,  49,  52,  77,  81,  83,  87 

—  of  the  methods  to  amalgamate,  83 

—  of  unrestricted  birthrate,  174 

—  of  working  for  private  advantage,  78-80 

—  reflex,  10,  62,  70,  178 

—  selective,  of  method  of  religious  motive,  85 

—  superior  to  reason,  42 

—  that  acts  ab  extra,  75 

—  to  break  the  entail  of  life,  53,  6I,  92 

—  to  control  the  birthrate,  6I,  9I 

—  to  deal  adequately  with  the  racial  and  social  stress,  72 

—  to  make  good  the  disability  of  reason,  7 1 

—  to  retain  both  liberty  and  law,  86 

—  wife  passed  under  the,  of  her  husband  under  confarreatio 

and   coemptio   in   the    Roman  Empire,    but    not    under 
ustis,  137,  138 
Problem : 

—  of  the  abolition  of  competition,  36 

—  of  the  maintenance  of  the  race,  13 

—  the  old,  new  problems  raised  by  solution  of,  69 

—  the  standing,  is  to  reconcile  individual  and  race,  13 
Problems : 

—  a  series  of  new  ones  raised  by  each  new  method,  69 

—  the  special  ones  dealt  with  by  each  method,  6Q 


INDEX  205 

Progress : 

—  under  method  of  instinct  is  wasteful,  17,  et  seq. 
Property : 

—  nationalisation  of,  43 
Protozoal  organism  : 

—  advance  from,  to  man,  9 

QUINTILIAN,  127 

Race  : 

—  advantage  of  instinct  falls  to  the,  14,  15,  17 

—  advantage  of  reason  is  not  limited  to  the,  29 

—  argument  dealing  with  the,  analogous  to  that  dealing  with 

society,  90 

—  attitude  of  the  individual  towards,  94 

—  blank  that  separates  its  interest  from  that  of  society,  71 

—  can  only  endure  under  a  method  which  helps  the  transitory 

to  act  in  behalf  of  the  permanent,  25 

—  cleavage  between  the  interests  of  society  and  the,  5Q 

—  conduct  that  serves  the,  76,  90,  91 

—  continued  under  influence  of  instinct,  l6,  49 

—  cosmocentric  considerations  require  the  individual  to  act 

unselfishly  in  favour  of  the,  ^5 

—  death  draws  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the,  52 

—  definition  of,  SS 

—  diagram  illustrating  the  interests  of  the  individual,  society, 

and  the,  35,  55 

—  dim  future  of  the,  is  far  removed  from  purview  of  the 

individual,  95 

—  distinction  between  society  and  the,  SS,  Q5,  1 23 

—  divergence  between  interests  of  the  individual  and  the,  5Q 

—  diverse  interests  of  the  individual  and,  55 

—  duty  towards,  87,  94,  153 

—  earthly  conduct  concerning,  has  cosmocentric  significance, 

76,  89,  101 

—  has  a  future  in  which  the  individual  has  no  part,  13 

—  hopes  to  preserve,  Augustus's,  139 

—  hostility  of  society  to  the,  95 

—  hostility  of  the  interests  of  the  individual  and  the,  52 

—  if  the  individual  lived  as  long  as  the,  50 

—  in  contact  with  the  individual,  33,  34 

—  in  pure  reason  the  individual  is  greater  than  the,  54,  55 

—  individual  held  in  subjugation  to  the,  by  instinct,  17 

—  instinct  a  property  of  the,  29 

—  instinct  an  appurtenance  of  the,  14 

—  instinct  the  servant  of  the,  83 

—  instinctive  individual  held  in  subjugation  to  the,  15 


206  THE  FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Race  (jcontinued) : 

—  instinctive   method   successful  in  subordinating  the   indi- 

vidual to  the,  25 

—  instincts  that  concern  themselves  about  the,  48 

—  interaction   of  interests   of  the    individual   with    that   of 

society  and  the,  33 

—  interest  of  the,  in  no  way  involved  in  reconciliation  of  indi- 

vidual and  society,  36 

—  interest  of  society  and  the,  34,  35,  58,  64,  98,  146,  178 

—  interest  of  the  individual  and  the,  34,  48,  56 

—  interest  of  the  individual  cannot  be  identified  with  that  of 

the,  54 

—  interest  of  the  individual  separated  from  that  of  the,  14,  34 

—  inviolability  of  Chinese,  l75 

—  invulnerability  of  Chinese,  157 

—  is  injured  under  method  of  reason,  51 

—  is  it  the  duty  of  the  individual  to  carry  the,  to  its  utmost 

limits?  87 

—  lives  in  an  ever-moving  present,  50 

—  logical  position  of  society  vis-a-vis  to,  58 

—  maintained  and  magnified  in  China  in  spite  of  enormous 

difficulties,  I69 

—  maintenance  of  the,  96 

—  means  whereby  the  individual  can  serve  the,  96 

—  mutual  relations  of  society  and  the,  9^ 

—  one  that  has  disappeared,  110 

—  only  the  individual  and  the,  33 

—  organic  advance  and  perfection  of  the,  1 7 

—  permanent,  13 

—  preservation  of  the,  88,  178 

—  problems  of  the  maintenance  of  the,  1 3 

—  pure  reason  careless  of  the,  54 

—  pure  reason  the  enemy  of  the,  83 

—  rational  destruction  of  the  interest  of  the,  6I 

—  rational  relations  of  the  individual  and  the,  55 

—  reason  deadly  to  the,  177 

—  reason  would   subordinate  the  interest  of,  to  that  of  the 

individual,  55 

—  regarded  as  an  organism  possessed  of  indefinitely  prolonged 

existence,  50 

—  relation  of  the  interest  of  society  with  that  of  the,  35,  55 

—  relations  between  society  and,  59 

—  religious  motive   retains   law  so   far   as  interests  of,    are 

concerned,  92 

—  reproduction  of  the,  32,  34,  56 

—  result  accruing  to  the,  under  reason,  48 


INDEX  207 

Race  (continued)  : 

—  self-destruction  of  the,  the  result  of  eugenic  measures,  151 

—  served  by  Taoism  in  China,  156 

—  society  ancillary  to,  under  religious  motive,  95 

—  society  and  the,  are  guarded  under  method  of  religious 

motive,  102 

—  subjection  of  the  individual  to  the,  48,  92 

—  subordination  of  the  individual  to  the,  15 

—  sudden  development  and  extermination  of  ancient  Greek, 

148-150 

—  supreme  power  passes  from  the,  to  the  individual,  30 

—  the  Chinese,  174,  l75 

—  the  demands  of  the,  behests  of  cosmocentric  religion  higher 

than,  76 

—  the  family  and  the,  in  China,  I69 

—  the  family  and  the,  under  the  Roman  Empire,  134 

—  the  family  in  contact  with,  shown  in  agnatic  relationship, 

137 

—  the  Greek,  148,  174 

—  the  individual  sacrificed  to  the,  under  method  of  instinct, 

15 

—  the  inheritance  of  the,  spent  upon  society  in  Rome,  139,  1^6 

—  the  most  successful,  efforts  to  breed  in  ancient  Greece,  150 

—  the  mutual  dependence  of  society  and,  56 

—  the  position  of  the,  under  Roman  Empire,  139 

—  the  Roman  malaria,  174 

—  the  sacrifice  of  the,  in  favour  of  society  in  Rome,  1 39 

—  the  unit  of  the,  is  not  the  family,  99 

—  the  use  of  the  word,  will  be  only  as  defined,  23 

—  toll  taken  from  the,  by  reason,  63 

—  uses  the  individual  as  an  instrument  under  the   method 

of  instinct,  29 
Race-suicide : 

—  direct  incitement  to,  by  death  duties,  98 
Reason : 

—  a  tincture  of,  co-existing  with  instinct,  1 2,  22 

—  acting  in  the  interest  of  the  individual,  30 

—  action  of  society  under  the  method  of,  9^ 

—  advantage  of  this  method  is  that  it  waits  on  the  individual, 

29 

—  a  method  entitled  to  take  precedence  of,  66 

—  a  population  devoid  of,  I66 

—  an  animal  endowed  with  power  of  rational  action  will  make 

itself  master  of  the  world,  27 

—  and  instinct  pull  in  opposite  directions,  49 

—  appeal  is  ultimately  to,  178 


208         THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Reason  (^continued) : 

—  arose  to  remedy  the  flaw  in  instinct,  and  filled  the  gap  left 

by  it,  62,  70 

—  as  a  geocentric  method,  84 

—  as  a  modus  vivendi  between  the  transitory  and   the  per- 

manent, 13 

—  at  the  service  of  the  individual,  34 

—  blankly  a-moral,  80 

—  can  it  state  the  terms  of  the  mutual  dependence  of  society 

and  the  race  ?  56 

—  can  this  method  be  justified  ?  35 

—  careless  of  the  race,  54 

—  character  of,  90,  92 

—  civilisation  is  ephemeral  in  direct  ratio  to  its  dependence 

on,  63 

—  compelling  French  society  to  advance  to  racial  doom,  64 

—  competition  from  point  of  view  of,  41,  42 

—  condemnation  of  method  of,  60 

—  condemned  if  it  does  not  afford  a  basis  for  a  stable  civilisa- 

tion, 35 

—  confers  power  to  break  the  entail  of  life,  53 

—  deadly  to  the  race,  177 

—  definition  of,  28 

—  desires  identification  of  interest  of  individual  with  that  of 

society,  55 

—  development  of,  rapid  in  ancient  Greece,  148,  151 

—  did  not  spare  new-comers  in  Roman  Empire,  146 

—  disability  special  to,  67,  71 

—  does  not  exist  apart  from  instinct,  28 

—  does  not  lend  herself  to  equivocation,  57 

—  does  not  subordinate  the  individual  to  any  considerations 

outside  his  own  interest,  29,  30 

—  dominant  in  Roman  Empire,  139 

—  environment  created  by,  70,  7 1 

—  ever-increasing  power  of,  as  compared  with  instinct,  27 

—  example  of  movement  in  the  direction  of  drawing  infer- 

ences, 22-24 

—  extirpated  the  great  breed  of  Rome,  147 

—  failure  of,  to  reconcile  interests  of  individual  and  the  race, 

54,  56 

—  family  not  justified  under,  QS 

—  first    achieved    predominance    by   reducing   the    limitless 

waste  in  the  method  of  instinct,  38 

—  frees  the  individual  from  both  stresses,  49 

—  generally  found  in  conjunction  with  some  form  of  religious 

motive,  28 


INDEX  209 

Reason  (continued) : 

—  gift  of,  is  the  true  means  of  subduing  surroundings,  31 

—  gives  power  to  break  the  entail  of  life,  92 

—  gives  power  to  control  the  birthrate,  6l,  88 

—  gulf  between  primarily  rational  and  primarily  instinctive, 

27 

—  has  already  wrought  an  immense  change,  37 

—  has   created,  but   left  unsatisfied,  the  need  of  a  basis  of 

racial  action,  70 

—  has  made  the  human  being  the  overlord  of  creation,  and, 

in    him,    has   attained   the   overlordship   over   instinct, 
27 

—  has  no  racial  quality,  52 

—  highest  expression  of,  is  to  be  found  in  socialism,  46,  6l 

—  history  a  complex  of  instinct,  religious  motive,  and,  29 

—  history  of  the  growth  of,  83 

—  hostility  of  society  to  the  race  under  the  method  of,  95 

—  how  can  this  method  help  ?  31,  82 

—  how  will  it  deal  with  the  two  permanent  stresses  ?  31 

—  humanity  circumscribed  by,  in  absence  of  freedom  of  the 

will,  75 

—  if  man  is  absolutely  dependent  upon  it  this  method  should 

have  no  flaw,  28 

—  imperious,  demands  total  abolition  of  the  two  stresses  of 

life,  57 

—  in  relation  to  competition,  36,  48,  6l 

—  in  relation  to  reproduction,  48 

—  in  the  ascendant  in  Rome,  133 

—  in  the  matter  of  the  birthrate,  62 

—  incompetent  because  it  does  not  provide  a  place  for  dis- 

interested conduct,  68 

—  inevitable  work  of,  is  to  break  the  entail  of  life,  62 

—  inferential  conduct  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  it  that 

impulsive  action  stands  to  instinct,  30 

—  inferential  power  of,  45 

— -  instinct  fallen  into  the  toils  of,  53 

—  instinct  held  in  the  leash  of,  49 

—  interests  of  society  and,  98 

—  is  it  competent  to  abolish  competition  ?  38 

—  is  not  destroyed  by  religious  motive,  179 

—  is  the  method  that  judges  by  interest,  39 

—  judged  by  the  cosmocentric  standard,  89 

—  limitations  that  make  it  incompetent,  72 

—  loses  its  old-time  cogency,  79 

—  magnifies  its  office,  63 

—  marred  by  a  disability  peculiar  to  itself,  1 1 

O 


210  THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Reason  (continued) : 

—  may  be  a  sufficient  guide  if  the  interests  of  the  individual 

and  the  race  can  be  reconciled,  36 

—  method  of,   29,  35,  42,  66,  67,  72,   76,  84,   85,   89,  95, 

101 

—  method  of,  fails  racially,  66 

—  modicum  of,  possessed  by  modern  animals,  20 

—  moral  aspect  of  method,  88 

—  must  advance  on  lines  indicated  by  the  interest  of  the 

individual,  32 

—  no   record    of   an    enduring    civilisation    that    rested    on, 

177 

—  not  discarded,  but  new  method  superimposed  over,  68 

—  office  of,  is  to  prevent  waste,  46 

—  only  in  rational  world  that   conduct  that   is  of  ultimate 

interest  to  the  individual  appears,  30,  32 

—  philosophy  of  Stoic  was  circumscribed  by,  112 

—  power  of,  37,  48,  l67 

—  pre-eminence  in,  among  ancient  Greeks,  149 

—  prepotent,  would  become  self-destructive,  83 

—  progressively  increasing  ascendancy  of,  45 

—  provides  a  short  cut  to  advantageous  position,  26 

—  provides  racial  liberty,  91 

—  racial  anarchy  of,  91 

—  racial  destruction  at  the  bidding  of,  6l 

—  racial  immorality  and  social  a-morality  of,  89,  103 

—  racial  immorality  of,   precludes  its  adoption  by  religious 

motive,  89 

—  racial  insolvency  of,  65 

—  racial  liberty  of,  92 

—  racially  discredited  method  of,  78 

—  relation  of,  to  its  own  environment,  70 

—  relations  with  social  stress,  77 

—  removal  of  both  stresses  demanded  by,  58 

—  retention  of  element  of  law  under,  85 

—  reverses  conditions  of  instinctive  life,  30 

—  scope  of,  29 

—  seems  to  lose  its  old-time  cogency  when  advocating  non- 

competitive conditions,  38 

—  sense  of  cosmocentric  duty  capable  of  restraining,  178 

—  social  a-morality  of,  obviated  by  religious  motive,  85 

—  socialism  the  highest  expression  of,  46,  6l 

—  socially  a-moral  character  and  method  of,  81 

—  still  operative,  38 

—  stopped  at  no  halfway  house  in  ancient  Rome,  1 38 

—  succeeds  instinct,  12 


INDEX  211 

Reason  (continued) : 

—  supra-rational    method    no    more    destroys    it    than    this 

method  destroys  instinct,  but  is  superimposed  over  it, 
68,  178 

—  taking  all  the  earth  for  its  province,  71 

—  the  courts  of,  the  method  of  religious  motive  in,  178 

—  the  demands  of,  effect  upon  marriage  in  Rome,  138 

—  the  enemy  of  the  race,  83 

—  the   interests  of  the  individual  and  the  race   cannot  be 

identified,  because  under  this  method  the  individual  is 
greater  than  the  race,  54 

—  the  power  to  make  good  the  special  disability  of,  71 

—  the  predominant  partner  in  the  association  with  instinct, 

46 

—  the  prepotent  factor,  45 

—  the  triumph  of,  in  Rome,  122 

—  the  very  beginnings  of,  20 

—  the  work  of,  125,  126 

—  this  method  and  that  of  instinct  have  failed,  67 

—  to  palter  with,  57 

—  unsuccessful  in  any  attempt  to  reconcile  interests  of  indi- 

vidual and  race,  55 

—  want  of,  instinct  fails  for,  1,9 

—  wanton  bidding  of,  89 

—  wastefulness  of,  63 

—  waxes  while  instinct  wanes,  49 

—  what  has  been  its  action  in  dealing  with  the  strife  between 

the  individual  and  society  ?  36,  31 

—  what  is  the  common  element  of  failure  ?  68 

—  why  should  it  not  substitute  a  non-competitive  system  ?  38 

—  why  should  it  stop  with  its  work  half  done  ?  38 

—  will  no  longer  be  a  slave  to  instinct,  27 

—  will  overtake  instinct,  27 

—  would  subordinate  the  interest  of  the  race  to  that  of  the 

individual,  55 
Reciprocating  machinery.     See  Machinery 
Religious  Motive  : 

—  able   to   retain    element   of  value    in    each   of  the  other 

systems,  85 

—  and  duty,  77,  95 

—  and  non-competitive  life,  78 

—  and  purely  competitive  life,  77 

—  as  a  modus  vivendi  between  the  transitory  and  the  perma- 

nent, 13 

—  as  the  basis  of  a  permanent  civilisation,  74 

—  attitude  of  society  under  the  method  of,  95 

o  2 


212         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Religious  Motive  (continued) : 

—  comes  with  its  own  authority,  84 

—  continuance  of  entail  vital  to,  89 

—  does  not  seek  geocentric  interest,  101 

—  evidence  of  ability  brought  by,  87 

—  has  it  failed  ?  100 

—  history  a  complex  of  instinct,  reason,  and,  29 

—  individual  takes  his  own  course  in  this  method,  86 

—  influence  of,  on  society,  94 

—  is  wholly  distinct  from  its  predecessors,  74 

—  justification  of  method,  100 

—  law  and  liberty  co-ordinated  under,  92,  102 

—  liberty  demanded  by  this  method,  101 

—  method    falls   neither   into   racial    immorality    nor   social 

a-morality,  but  is  perfect  both  socially  and  racially,  103 

—  method  of,  9,  13,  74,  85,  100,  177-179 

—  mutual  relations  of  society  and  the  race  under,  94 

—  not  directly  concerned  with  geocentric  interests,  95 

—  office  of  society  under,  96 

—  point  of  view  of,  90 

—  possessed  of  a  quality  that  distinguishes  it  from  its  prede- 

cessors, 74,  83 

—  power  found  under,  92 

—  power  of  this  method  to  deal  with  social  stress  and  with 

racial  stress,  73,  86 

—  reason  dissociated  from,  28 

—  reason  found  in  conjunction  with,  28 

—  reciprocating  machinery  of,  83 

—  relation  of,  to  racial  stress,  87 

—  relation  of,  to  social  stress,  74,  77,  78 

—  retains  law  and  liberty,  92 

—  selective  power  of  this  method,  92 

—  society  under  the  influence  of  this  method,  96,  98 

—  standpoint  of,  77 

—  would  be  equally  stultified  by  the  exclusive  adoption  of  the 

racial  element  in  either  of  the  geocentric  methods,  89 

—  would  be  equally  stultified   by  the  exclusive  adoption  of 

the  social  element  in  either  of  the  geocentric  methods,  81 
Reproduction : 

—  See  Stress,  subheading  racial  or  reproductive 
Revolt : 

—  against  both  the  social  and  the  racial  stress,  60,  1 00 

—  against  the  one  stress,  60 

—  against  the  other,  60 

—  against  the  racial  stress  in  Rome,  137,  139 

—  against  the  social  stress  in  Rome,  137 


INDEX  213 

Revolt  (continited) : 

—  against  the  two  primary  stresses,  108 

—  of  reason   shows  itself  simultaneously  against  the   social 

stress  and  the  racial  stress,  60 

—  the  emperors  of  Rome  not  destroyed  by  any,  125 
Riddle : 

—  of  the  Sphinx,  13,  1 7 
Rock: 

—  limpet  clinging  to,  as  an  illustration  of  method   of  reflex 

action,  9 
Romanes  (Dr.),  23 

Rome,  45,  107,  110,  112,  116-118,  123,  139,  1^9,  158,  174,  177 
Ross  (Prof  E.  A.),  l60,  l66,  l7l,  172 
Ross  (Sir  Ronald),  174 

Saint  Paul.     See  Paul 
Salome,  102 
Scandinavian  lemming : 

—  as  an  illustration  of  the  flaw  in  instinct,  10 
School ; 

—  the  newer,  of  economists,  32,  5Q 

—  the  older,  of  economists,  32,  5Q 
Schools : 

—  of  thought,  32 
Self-sacrifice : 

—  a  life-long,   circumstances  under  which   it  becomes  com- 

patible with  reason,  179 

—  a  life  of  reasoned,  72 

—  an  accident  of,  stable  civilisation  only  possible  as,  103 

—  in  the  service  of  Tao,  156 

—  of  a  rational  being,  75,  76,  103,  114 

—  of  inborn  impulse,  77 

—  of  the  individual  in  favour  of  the  race  is  not  warranted  by 

reason,  68 

—  power  of,  frees  the  method  of  religious  motive  from  the 

incompetence  of  the  method  of  reason,  72 

—  the  need  of,  revealed  by  reason,  71 
Service : 

—  a  life  of  significant,  is  the  work  of  the  individual  under  the 

method  of  religious  motive,  84 

—  and  freedom  within  the  method  of  religious  motive,   QS, 

102 

—  Jew  held  to  the,  of  the  God  of  his  fathers,  117 

—  life  that  is  significant  is  expressed  in,  72 

—  of  both  society  and  the  race  under  method   of  religious 

motive,  178 


214         THE  FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Service  (continued) : 

—  reason  at  the,  of  the  individual,  29,  34- 

—  that  is  a  method  of  religious  motive,  72 

—  that  knew  no  earthly  tie,  117 

—  the  expression  of  conscious  relation  to  the  infinite,  72 

—  the  life  of  significant,  72 

—  truly  significant,  82 
Sex: 

—  antagonism,  52 

—  each  is  apt  to  regard  the  other  as  the   cause  of  its  own 

undoing,  52 

—  the  childless  of  either,  and  the  franchise,  99 
Significance : 

—  antecedents  necessary  to,  are  law  and  liberty,  81,  82,  92 

—  conduct  invested  with  the  dignity  of  cosmocentric,  76 

—  considerations  that  are  of  infinite,  73 

—  cosmocentric,  75,  76,  81,  83,  87,  90,  91,  101,  156,  178,  l79 

—  each  geocentric  method  fails  to  confer,  82 

—  element  of  liberty  necessary  to,  85 

—  entailed,  89 

—  in  conduct,  81,  82 

—  in  each  of  the  geocentric  methods,  85,  92 

—  in  racial  conduct,  101 

—  in  social  conduct,  85,  101 

—  liberty  and  law  essential  to,  81,  82,  92 

—  life  of,  77,  87 

—  lives  of,  that  are  to  follow  after  us,  88 

—  of  conduct  under  the  method  of  religious  motive,  86 

—  of  life,  72,  85,  87,  89 

—  of  life  is  life  itself,  79 

—  of  life  of  individual,  85 

—  provision  of,  ()6,  97 

—  provision  or  non-provision  of,  89 

—  racial,  91,  93 

—  standard  of  cosmocentric,  103 

—  the  region  of,  Salome's  question  raised  into,  102 

—  the  very  existence  of,  in  the  future  is  at  stake  in  racial 

conduct,  89 
Socialism : 

—  blend  of,  with  syndicalism  under  Roman  Empire,  128 

—  German,  60 

—  in  the  Roman  Empire,  128,  et  seq. 

—  means  the  identification  of  the  interests  of  the  individual 

with  those  of  society,  57 

—  ordinary  definition  of,  43 

—  prominence  of,  and  a  falling  birthrate,  100 


INDEX  215 

Society : 

—  a  communistic,  58,  GS,  96 

—  a  member  of  a  socialistic,  gains  everything  else,  but  has 

sold  his  soul,  79 

—  a  non-competitive,  39,  40,  42,  58 

—  a  socialistic,  49,  57,  58,  63,  79,  80 

—  acting  in  its  own  interests  attacks  the  family,  98 

—  acting  under  the  influence  of  religious  motive,  9^,  96 

—  and  the  race  are  guarded  under  the  method  of  religious 

motive,  102 

—  argument  dealing  with,  is  analogous  to  that  dealing  with 

the  race,  90 

—  as  an  organism,  36 

—  ascendancy  of,  under  Roman  Empire,  139 

—  blank  that  separates  the  interests  of  the  race  from  that  of, 

58,  71 

—  character  of,  in  the  present  day,  QQ 

—  character  of,  under  the  Roman  Empire,  134 

—  claims  of,  39,  76 

—  cleavage  between  the  interests  of  the  race  and,  56 

—  competitive,  does  not  require  the  individual  character  that 

is  essential  to  a  non-competitive,  41 

—  conception  of,  33 

—  conduct  that  benefits,  under  method  of  religious  motive, 

76 

—  conflict  between  the  individual  and,  47 

—  consideration  of  relative  interests  of  individual  and,  33,  34 

—  co-ordination  of  work  necessary  to  carry  on,  40 

—  corporate  action  of,  with  regard  to  the  family,  98 

—  definition  of,  33 

—  degradation  in  forms  of  marriage  in,  under  Roman  Empire, 

137 

—  diagrammatic  illustration  of  triangle  of  interests  of  the  indi- 

vidual, the  race,  and,  35,  55 

—  distinction  between  the  race  and,  35,  123 

—  duty  of,  94 

—  earthly  conduct  concerning,  76 

—  enfeeblement  of,  in  China,  170 

—  essentially  contrived  to  secure  material  ease,  if  socialistic, 

57 

—  every  member  of,  interested  in  raising  the  general  standard 

of  living,  78 

—  exaltation  of,  under  Roman  Empire,  122,  132 

—  French,  64 

—  friction  in  a  socialistic,  would  be  caused  by  unselfishness 

and  self-reliance,  41 


216         THE   FATE   OF  EMPIRES 

Society  (continued) : 

—  has  provided  a  link  in  the  family  that  shall  join  the  living 

of  the  present  to  the  living  of  the  future,  96 

—  hostility  between  the  individual  and  the  race  uncovered  in 

a  rational,  52 

—  hostility  of,  to  the  race,  95 

—  identification  of  interests  of  the  individual  vi^ith  that  of,  46, 

55,  57 

—  impoverishment  of,  in  China,  157 

—  in  China,  158 

—  in  Roman  Empire,  123,  128,  130,  138,  158 

—  individual  equal  to,  55 

—  individual  incurs  stress  of  competition  in  contact  vrith,  34 

—  instinct  the  enemy  of,  83 

—  interaction  of  interest  of  individual  with  that  of,  33 

—  interest  of,  33,  57,  83,  156 

—  interest  of  individual  in  relation  to,  34,  36,  42,  45,  46,  55, 

56 

—  interest  of  the  race  and,  34,  35,  55,  64,  98,  146,  178 

—  involved  in  horrible  conditions  in  China,  174 

—  logical  position  of,  vis-d-vis  to  the  race,  58 

—  members  of,  seek  their  own  ends  under  socialistic  condi- 

tions, 46 

—  moral  position  of  individual  in  a  world  wherein  all  property 

would  be  invested  in,  78 

—  most  splendid  period  of  Roman,  138 

—  mutual  dependence  of  the  individual,  the  race,  and,  94 

—  mutual  relations  of  the  race  and,  94 

—  new  attitude  of,  under  method  of  religious  motive,  95 

—  no  more  than  individuals  acting  in  concert,  94 

—  of  unparalleled  magnificence  under  the  Roman  Empire,  123 

—  office  of,  under  method  of  religious  motive,  96 

—  our  duties  to,  89 

—  racial  duty  of,  95 

—  racial  ideas  shut  out  from  meaning  attached  to  the  word, 

33 

—  rational  character  of  a  non-competitive,  42 

—  rational  relations  of  the  individual  and,  55 

—  reaps  the  benefit  of  death  duties,  98 

—  relations  between  the  race  and,  34,  55,  59,  94 

—  religious  motive  retains  the  element  of  liberty  in,  85 

—  riches  spent  upon,  under  method  of  reason,  88 

—  same  character  in  Greek  and  in  Roman  civilisation,  148 

—  splendour  of  Roman,  1 39 

—  State  not  ancillary  to,  in  China,  170 

—  strife  between  a  given  individual  and,  34,  37 


INDEX  217 

Society  {conthmed) : 

—  takes  the  place  of  the  individual  vis-t-vis  to  the  race,  5Q,  58 

—  the  family  in  its  contact  with,  shown  in  cognation,  136 

—  the  family  in  relation  to,  9? 

—  the  necessary  work  of,  how  carried  on  in  the  absence  of 

competition,  39 

—  the  subjection  of  the  individual  to,  under  the  method  of 

religious  motive,  85 

—  the  unit  of,  is  not  the  family,  99 

—  under  a  system  of  common  ownership,  56 

—  under  the  influence  of  religious  motive,  86,  98 

—  under  the  method  of  reason,  55,  et  seq. 

—  use  of  the  word,  33 
Soranus,  140 

Spain,  171 
Species : 

—  actual  struggle  for  life  is  among  the  young  of  every,  l6 

—  how  does  the  individual  fare  as  apart  from?  14 

—  instinct  leads  to  the  most  rapid  reproduction  of,  l6 

—  perpetuation  of,  under  method  of  instinct,  13 

—  stress  involved  in  the  rearing  of  the  young  of  the,  17 

—  subordination  of  the  individual  to  the  interests  of  the,  29 

—  the  care  of  the  young  of  the,  and  the  true  interest  of  the 

adult  animal,  14 
Spencer  (Herbert),  26,  27,  41 
State : 

—  and  patriotism  count  for  very  little  in  China,  170 

—  assumption  of  supreme  and  intrusive  power  in  Rome,  108 

—  can  barely  exist  in  China,  156 

—  Chinaman  careless  of  the,  l67 

—  Chinese  religion  no  polity  of  the,  156 

—  Church  and,  Augustus  becomes  head  of  both  in  Rome,  112 

—  compulsion,  the  curse  of,  86 

—  convulsed  for  thirteen  years  in  Rome  after  the  death  of 

Julius  Caesar,  111 

—  encouragement  of  geocentric  religions  by  Roman,  11 6,  117 

—  good  and  evil  in  the,  discovery  of,  4 

—  feebleness  of,  as  a  source  of  disaster  in  China,  l70 

—  less  able   members   prevented  from  contributing   to   the 

numbers  of  the  Greek,  150 

—  maintained  by  influx  of  aliens  in  Rome,  145 

—  necessity,  manumission  of  slaves  under  Roman  Empire  was 

a,  145 

—  only  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  family,  108,  109,  170 

—  religion  as  an  instrument  of,  11 6,  117 

—  religion  recognised  by,  11 6,  117 


218  THE   FATE    OF   EMPIRES 

State  {continued) : 

—  religions  that  subserved  the,  108,  114 

—  the  married,  aversion  from,  under  Roman  Empire,  138 

—  the  Roman,  and  abolition  of  competition,  128,  et  seq. 

—  vacant  legacies  inherited  by,  under  Roman  Empire,  142 

—  weakness  of,  in  China,  l7l 
Steam  locomotion  : 

—  admits  of  little  further  improvement,  and  is  already  passing 

into  a  less  prominent  position,  8,  9 

—  supersedes  sailing-ship  and  old  system  of  coaching,  8 
Stimulus : 

—  need  of  a  power  to  act  independently  of,  69,  70 

—  of  competition,  SQ,  41 

—  reflex  response  to,  9,  10,  QS,  68,  6^ 

—  the  respiratory  centre  called  into  action  by,  10 
Stress  : 

—  and  anxiety  falling  upon  parents,  51 

—  competitive  or  social,  I6,  30,  32,  34,  48,  50,  52,  58,  6I,  72, 

74,  77,  78,  86,  93,  100,  101,  158,  178 

—  complete  cessation  of  the  competitive,  demanded  by  reason, 

38,  e<  seq. 

—  escape  from  racial,  only  possible  by  avoidance  of  parent- 

hood, 58 

—  involved  in  the  rearing  of  the  young  of  the  species,  17 

—  no  material  difference  to  the  individual,  58 

—  of  life,  31,  51,  72 

—  racial  or  reproductive,  32,  34,  43,  50,  54,  56-58,  6I,  63,  72, 

87,  93,  100-102,  109 

—  rational  revolt  against  social  and  racial,  practically  simul- 

taneous, 60,  et  seq. 

—  revolt  against  racial,  under  Roman  Empire,  137,  139 

—  revolt  against  social,  under  Roman  Empire,  128,  et  seq. 

—  still  arises  from  the  same  two  causes,  31 

—  the  abolition  of,  under  method  of  reason,  32,  et  seq. 

—  the  general,  of  life  and  the  method  of  religious  motive, 

72 
Stresses : 

—  endurance   of  the   two,    under   the   method    of  religious 

motive,  101 

—  incidence  of  two,  must  be  examined  separately,  32 

—  severity  of  both,  relieved  under  reason,  31 

—  social  and  racial,  60 

—  the  revolt  against,  under  reason,  60 

—  the  two  essential,  31,  51,  72 

—  two  great  permanent,  31,  74,  77 

—  which  should  be  modified  ?  32 


INDEX  219 

Suetonius,  123 
Sustenance : 

—  animal  world  brings  forth  its  young  in  numbers  that  far 

exceed  the  limits  of,  15 

—  animal  world  long  ago  reached  the  Umit  of,  l6,  30 

—  to  man  the  possible  limits  of,  outrun  reproduction,  31 
Syllogism : 

—  man's  only  sword  and  only  shield,  28 
Syndicalism : 

—  a  blend  of,  with  Socialism  under  Roman  Empire,  128 

Tacitus,  123,  127,  143,  145 
Taeping  Rebellion,  171 
Tao: 

—  is  not  ad  hoc^  156 

—  means  "The  Path,"  153 

—  rules  in  virtue  of  its  own  authority,  156 

—  the  ancient  core  of  Chinese  belief,  153 

—  the  path  of  Creation,  156 
Taoism  : 

—  makes  no  attempt  to  deal  with  competitive  stress,  177 

—  of  Confucius,  156 

—  takes  nothing  into  account  except  the  family,  I69 
TertuUian,  121 

Thebes,  176 

Theology  (the  domain  of),  178 

Thucydides,  151 

Tiber,  147 

Tiberianus,  120 

Tiberius,  143 

Titus,  118 

Touchstone  : 

—  a  common  factor  that  will  furnish  a,  67 
Trades  Unions : 

—  Chinese  analogue  of,  158 

—  in  the  Roman  Empire,  128 
Trajan,  120 

Unification  : 

—  of  effort  under  method  of  reason,  57 
United  Kingdom,  17 1 

Usus  : 

—  a  form  of  marriage  in  the  Roman  Empire,  137,  138 

Vespasian,  118 


220  THE   FATE   OF   EMPIRES 

Waste  : 

—  inevitable  in  the  method  of  instinct,  17,  20,  25 

—  inevitable  in  the  vegetable  world,  18 

—  limitless  under  instinct,  72 

—  of  effort,  17,  45,  46 

—  the  avoidance  of,  under  reason,  45 

—  to  prevent,  has  been  the  office  of  reason,  46 
Wastefulness : 

—  avoidance  of  instinctive,  24 

—  beyond  our  powers  of  conception,  17 

—  environment  of,  created  by  instinct,  62 

—  inevitable  in  the  method  of  instinct,  18,  19 

—  limitless  in  the  method  of  instinct,  38 

—  method  of,  inconceivable,  77 

—  of  effort  obviated  by  reason,  45 

—  of  reason  parallel  to  that  of  instinct,  63 

—  of  the  environment  created  by  instinct,  62 

—  of  the  primitive  method,  45 

—  practically  without  limit  under  instinct,  17 
White  man : 

—  Chinese  mind  incomprehensible  to  the,  I69 

—  civilisation  of,  not  yet  under  religious  motive,  1 00 

—  does  not  easily  realise  the  meaning  of  ancestor- worship,  153  ' 

—  every  community  of  the,  shows  failure  of  birthrate,  53 

—  possesses  the  records  of  past  civilisations,  3 

—  suffers  in  contest  of  wits  with  Chinaman,  l67 

—  the  average,  inferior  to  average  Chinaman,  I66 
Will: 

—  freedom  of,  75,  81 
Women : 

—  position  of,  assured  in  China,  173 

—  the  "  Higher  Education  "  of,  in  America  leads  to  avoidance 

of  office,  53 
Worship.     See  Ancestor 


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Edinburgh  &'  London 


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